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THE   PRESBYTERIAN   BOARD  OF  PUBLI- 
CATION AND  SABBATH-SCHOOL  WORK 

PHILADELPHIA  NEW  YORK 

CHICAGO  ST.  Louis  SAN  FRANCISCO 


FATHERS 


9th  Century  \  ANGLO 


14th  Century 


16th  Century 


17th  Century 


19th  C«ntu/y        REVISED  J|  VERSION 


How  we  got  our  Bible 


BY 
J.  PATERSON  SMYTH,  B.D.,  LLD. 

AUTHOR  OF  "How  GOD   INSPIRED  THE  BIBLE,"  "How  TO  READ  THE  BIBLE,"  "  THE 
OLD  DOCUMENTS  AND  THE  NEW  BIBLE,"  ETC. 


flew 

WITH  ADDITIONAL  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PHILADELPHIA 

THE  WESTMINSTER  PRESS 
1904 


COPYRIGHT,  1899,  BY 
JAMES  POTT  &  COMPANY 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  I. 

SOURCES  OF  OUR  BIBLE. 

FAGBS 

§  I.  The  Old  Record  Chest.  §  2.  Copyists'  Errors.  §  3. 
Necessity  of  Revision.  §  4.  Sources  of  Information 
open  to  Revisers.  §  5.  Special  Reasons  for  the  Last 
Revision 9-18 

CHAPTER  II. 

ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS. 

The  Oldest  Bibles  in  the  World.  §  i.  The  Vatican  Manu- 
script §  2.  The  Sinaitic  Manuscript.  §  3.  The  Alex- 
andrian. §  4.  Palimpsests.  §  5.  The  Manuscript  of 
Beza.  §  6.  Cursive  Manuscripts.  §  7.  Old  Testa- 
ment Revision '9-35 

CHAPTER  HI. 

ANCIENT  VERSIONS  AND  QUOTATIONS. 

§  i.  Various  Early  Versions.  §  2.  An  ancient  "  Revised 
Bible."  §  3.  How  Revision  was  regarded  fifteen  cen- 
turies ago.  §  4.  Advantage  of  this  investigation.  §  5. 
Quotations  from  Ancient  Fathers 36-46 

CHAPTER  IV. 

EARL  Y  ENGLISH  VERSIONS. 

§  I.  The  Bible  Poet.  §  2.  Eadhelm  and  Egbert.  §  3.  The 
Monk  of  Yarrow.  §  4.  A  Royal  Translator.  §  5.  Cu- 
rious Expressions 47-6o 


371541 


2  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   V. 

WYCLIFFE'S  VERSION. 

§  I.  Growth  of  the  Language.  §  2.  The  Parish  Priest  of 
Lutterworth.  §  3.  His  Death.  §  4.  The  Wycliffe  Ver- 
sion. §  5.  Results  of  his  Work 61-79 

CHAPTER  VI. 

TYND ALE'S  VERSION. 

§  I.  Printing.  §  2.  Revival  of  Greek  Learning.  §  3.  Tyn- 
dale's  Work.  §  4.  Reception  of  the  Book  in  England. 
§  5.  Death  of  Tyndale.  §  6.  Description  of  Tyndale's 
Version 80-102 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  BIBLE  AFTER  TYNDALE'S  DAYS. 

£  I.  Three  Years  After.     §  2.  Twenty  Years  After.     §  3. 

Fifty  Years  More  Gone  By 103-122 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  REVISED   VERSION. 

§  I.  Preparation  for  Revision.  §  2.  The  Jerusalem  Cham- 
ber. §  3.  The  Revisers  at  Work.  §  4.  Claims  of  the 
Revised  Bible.  §  5.  Will  it  Disturb  Men's  Faith? 
§  6.  General  Remarks — Conclusion 123-139 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


FACING 

DIAGRAM  SHOWING  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE Title  Page. 

PHOTOGRAPH  OF  ANCIENT  GREEK  MANUSCRIPTS 16 

PHOTOGRAPH  OF  THE  SINAITIC  MANUSCRIPT 24 

PHOTOGRAPH  OF  THE  CODEX  EPHRAEM 30 

PHOTOGRAPH  OF  THE  CODEX  BEZ^; 32 

PHOTOGRAPH  OF  ^ELFRIC'S  ANGLO-SAXON  BIBLE 59 

PHOTOGRAPH  OF  WYCLIFFE'S  BIBLE 76 

PHOTOGRAPH  OF  TYNDALE'S  NEW  TESTAMENT 99 


HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

First  Edition,  March,  1886  ...  2,000  Copies 

Second    "        May,  1886      .     .     .  3,000     " 

Third      "        June,  1886      .     .     .  5,000     " 

Fourth    "        March,  1887  .     .    .  6,000     " 

Fifth      "       Nov.,  1888     ...  3,000     " 


With  Corrections  and  Illustrations. 


Sixth  Edition, 
Seventh        " 

Dw.,  i» 

1800 

39    ...    5,000 

Eighth 
Ninth           " 

•891  . 

,g02 

.        .         -         -      IO,OOO 

Tenth 
Eleventh       " 
Twelfth       " 

1893  - 
•  895  - 
l8q6  . 

.        .        .        .      IO,OOO 

....    5i«x> 

c  QOO 

Thirteenth  " 
Fourteenth  " 

,898  . 
1899  . 

....    3,000 

Fifteenth    " 

1900  . 

.       .       .       .       3,000 

PREFACE 

To  THE  FIFTEENTH  EDITION. 

FOURTEEN  years  ago,  on  the  completion  of  the  Revised 
Version  of  the  Bible,  this  little  book  was  written. 
Questions  that  must  always  be  of  interest  to  men  were 
then  brought  into  special  prominence.  Not  only 
among  the  poorer  classes,  but  among  many  more  edu- 
cated people  as  well,  there  was  a  vaguely  puzzled 
half-suspicious  feeling  with  regard  to  the  new  Bible 
attempting  to  supersede  the  venerable  old  version, 
which  their  fathers  and  forefathers  for  hundreds  of 
years  past  had  read  as  God's  inspired  message  to  the 
world.  Men  were  surprised  at  finding  some  passages 
of  the  old  Bible  altered  so  as  quite  to  change  their 
meaning,  and  still  more  perhaps  at  noticing  here  and 
there  verses  entirely  omitted,  which  they  had  always 
regarded  as  part  of  the  inspired  Word  of  God.  And 
so  the  questions  constantly  arose  when  the  New 
Version  was  talked  of,  "What  fresh  information  has 
come  to  these  Bible  Revisers?  By  what  right  do 
men,  1800  years  after  the  time  of  Our  Lord,  venture 
to  meddle  with  the  words  of  His  revelation?"  which 

easily  led  to  itill  further  questions  as  to  the  existence 

5 


6  PREFACE. 

of  the  sacred  originals  of  our  present  Scriptures,  and 
the  way  in  which  these  Scriptures  have  come  down  to 
us.  It  is  a  good  thing  that  people  should  be  roused  by 
any  cause  to  ask  such  questions,  not  merely  because 
more  attention  will  thereby  be  drawn  to  a  Book  on 
which  such  vital  interests  depend,  but  also  and  espe- 
cially because  he  who  seeks  the  answer  to  them,  must 
indirectly  learn,  in  pursuing  his  inquiry,  what  is  of 
great  importance  to  an  intelligent  appreciation  of  his 
Bible. 

It  is  the  smallest  part  of  the  gain  of  such  an  investi- 
gation that  he  should  learn  what  Bible  Revision  really 
is,  its  continually  recurring  necessity,  and  the  advan- 
tages that  accrue  from  it  if  wisely  and  faithfully  car- 
ried out. 

He  will  also  gain  (what  is  of  much  value  in  these 
sceptical  days)  a  view  of  the  reception  of  the  New 
Testament  writings  in  the  age  soon  after  that  of  the 
apostles,  in  the  lifetime  of  men  whose  fathers  and 
grandfathers  had  been  contemporaries  of  St.  Paul  and 
St.  John.  The  inquiry  will  take  him  back  to  view  the 
Scriptures  of  the  second,  and  third,  and  fourth  cen- 
turies, already  translated  into  several  different  lan- 
guages— to  hear  the  testimony  of  a  "  great  cloud  of  wit- 
nesses," the 'ablest  scholars  and  deepest  thinkers  of 
those  days  bearing  united  testimony  to  these  Scriptures 
as  the  production  of  the  apostles  and  evangelists,  re- 
garding them  with  deepest  reverence  as  the  inspired 


PREFACE.  •> 

Word  of  God,  and  earnestly  devoting  the  best  of  their 
powers  to  the  study  and  elucidation  of  them. 

But  perhaps  the  most  important  result  from  his  in- 
quiry will  be  the  sense  of  continuity  arising  from  the 
view,  at  various  points,  of  the  line  of  connection  be- 
tween the  Apostolic  Bible  and  our  own — the  convic- 
tion of  the  substantial  identity  of  our  Scriptures  with 
those  of  the  first  century.  One  cannot  help  noticing 
what  a  haziness  there  is  in  many  minds  as  to  how  this 
Bible  of  ours  has  come  down  to  us,  a  haziness  which 
in  the  writer's  opinion  is  the  fruitful  parent  of  much 
unspoken  doubt,  or  at  least  of  that  uneasy  sense  of 
"  want  of  foundation  "  which,  though  most  men  are 
too  indolent  to  trouble  themselves  about  it,  is  often 
unconsciously  undermining  and  weakening  the  power 
of  their  beliefs.  The  reason  chiefly  is  that  they  cannot 
trace  the  continuity  of  the  book  from  apostolic  days 
to  their  own.  They  have  just  two  points  to  fix  upon, 
one  the  present  existence  of  their  English  Bible — the 
other  a  dim  hazy  speck  thousands  of  years  ago,  when, 
as  they  are  told,  "holy  men  of  old  spake  as  they  were 
moved  by  the  Holy  Ghost,"  and  between  these  two 
points  is  a  great  blank,  where  doubts  about  the  Bible 
are  easily  developed,  a  blank  which  "  Histories  of  the 
Bible,"  going  back  a  few  hundred  years  to  Wycliffe's 
Version,  do  very  little  indeed  to  bridge  over. 

Such  are  some  of  the  advantages  that  would  result 


8  PREFACE. 

from  a  thorough  study  of  this  subject.  Perhaps  even 
by  means  of  this  little  sketch,  those  results  may  in 
some  small  degree  be  gained  to  busy  men  and  women 
who  have  neither  the  time  nor  opportunity  for  study- 
ing it  more  fully.  At  any  rate  the  writer  desires  to 
keep  this  object  before  him  while  endeavoring  to  an- 
swer questions  brought  into  prominence  years  ago  by 
the  appearance  of  a  new  version  of  the  Bible,  but 
which  must  remain  of  interest  to  Christian  people  as 
long  as  the  Bible  itself  shall  last. 

This  edition  contains  photographs  of  some  famous 
and  most  interesting  manuscripts  which  have  not  ap- 
peared in  previous  editions.  Note  especially  the  frag- 
ment of  Codex  Bezae  with  its  curious  interpolation 

facing  page  32. 

J.  P.  S. 

CHRIST  CHURCH,  KINGSTOWN,  IRELAND,  Dec.,  1898. 


HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

CHAPTER  I. 

SOURCES  OF  OUR  BIBLE. 

§  I.  The  Old  Record  Chest.  §  2.  Copyists'  Errors.  §  3.  Neces- 
sity of  Revision.  §  4.  Sources  of  Information  open  to  Revisers. 
§  5.  Special  Reasons  for  the  Last  Revision. 

§  i.  LET  us  begin  then  by  imagining  before  us  the 
record  chest  of  one  of  the  early  Christian  churches, — 
say  Jerusalem,  or  Rome,  or  Ephesus, — about  120  A.  D., 
when  sufficient  time  had  elapsed  since  the  completion 
of  the  New  Testament  writings  to  allow  most  of  the 
larger  churches  to  procure  copies  for  themselves.  In 
any  one  church,  perhaps,  we  should  not  find  very 
much,  but  if  we  collect  together  the  documents  of 
some  of  the  leading  churches  we  should  have  before 
us  something  of  this  sort: 

I.  Some  manuscripts  of  the  Hebrew  Old  Testament 
books. 

The  reader  will  keep  in  mind  that  the  Old  Testament  books 
were  originally  written  in  Hebrew,  those  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment in  Greek. 

II.  A  good  many  more  of  the  Old  Testament  books 

9 


10  SOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

translated  into  Greek  for  general  use  in  the  churches, 
Greek  being  the  language  most  widely  known  at  the 
time. 

This  translation  is  called  the  Septuagint,  or  "  Version  of  the 
Seventy"  from  an  old  tradition  of  its  having  been  prepared 
by  seventy  learned  Jews  of  Alexandria.  It  was  made  at  dif- 
ferent times,  beginning  somewhere  about  280  B.  c.,  and  was 
the  version  commonly  used  by  the  Evangelists  and  Apostles. 
This  accounts  for  the  slight  difference  we  sometimes  notice 
between  the  Old  Testament  and  their  quotations  from  it,  our 
Old  Testament  being  translated  direct  from  the  Hebrew. 

III.  A  few  rolls  of  the  Apocryphal  Books,  written 
by  holy  men  in  the  Church,  and  valued  for  the  prac- 
tical leaching  they  contained. 

IV.  Either  the  originals  or  direct  copies  of  the  Gos- 
pels and  the  Acts,  the  Epistles  of  SS.  Paul  and  Peter 
and  John,  and  the  Book  of  the  Revelation. 

§  2.  Now  let  us  remember  clearly  that  as  we  look 
into  that  old  record  chest  of  nearly  1800  years  ago,  we 
have  before  us  all  the  sources  from  which  we  get  our 
Bible. 

And  remember  further  that  these  writings  were  of 
course  all  manuscript,  /.  e.,  written  by  the  hand,  and 
that  copies  when  needed  had  each  to  be  written  out, 
letter  by  letter,  at  a  great  expense  of  time  and  trouble, 
and  unfortunately,  I  must  add,  very  often  too  at  some 
expense  of  the  original  correctness.  However  careful 
the  scribe  might  be,  it  was  almost  impossible,  in  copy- 
ing a  long  and  difficult  manuscript,  to  prevent  the  oc- 


SOURCES  OF  OUR  BIBLE.  U 

currence  of  errors.  Sometimes  he  would  mistake  one 
letter  for  another — sometimes,  if  having  the  manu- 
script read  to  him,  he  would  confound  two  words  of 
similar  sound — sometimes  after  writing  in  the  last 
word  of  a  line,  on  looking  up  again  his  eye  would 
catch  the  same  word  at  the  end  of  the  next  line,  and 
he  would  go  on  from  that,  omitting  the  whole  line  be- 
tween. Remarks  and  explanations,  too,  written  in 
the  margin  might  sometimes  in  transcribing  get  in- 
serted in  the  text. 

In  these  and  various  other  ways  errors  might  creep 
into  the  copy  of  his  manuscript.  These  errors  would 
be  repeated  by  the  man  that  afterward  copied  from 
this,  who  would  also  sometimes  add  other  errors  of 
his  own.  So  that  it  is  evident,  as  copies  increased, 
the  errors  would  be  likely  to  increase  with  them,  and 
therefore,  as  a  general  rule,1 

THE  EARLIER  ANY  MANUSCRIPT,  THE  MORE  LIKELY  IT  IS  TO 
BE  CORRECT. 

The  reader  may  easily  test  this  for  himself  by  copy- 
ing a  dozen  pages  of  a  book,  then  hand  on  the  copy 
to  a  friend  to  recopy,  and  let  him  pass  on  to  another 
what  he  has  written,  and  so  have  the  operation  re- 
peated through  six  or  eight  different  hands  before 
comparing  the  last  copy  with  the  original.  It  will  be 

i  This  is  only  a  general  rule.  Of  course  it  is  quite  possible  for  a 
manuscript  A.  D.  1500  to  be  copied  direct  from  one  of  A.  D.  300.  and 
therefore  to  be  more  correct  than  some  a  thousand  years  older. 


12  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

an  interesting  illustration  of  the  danger  of  errors  in 
copying.  Even  in  printed  Bibles,  whose  proofs  have 
been  carefully  examined  and  reexamined,  these  mis- 
takes creep  in.  To  take  two  examples  out  of  many: 
An  edition  published  in  1653,  reads  i  Cor.  vi.  9, 
"Know  ye  not  that  the  unrighteous  shall  inherit  the 
kingdom  of  God;"  and  the  "Printer's  Bible,"  much 
sought  by  book  collectors,  puts  the  strange  anachro- 
nism in  King  David's  mouth,  "Printers  have  persecuted 
me  without  a  cause"  (Ps.  cxix.  161). 

We  know,  of  course,  God  might  have  miraculously 
prevented  scribes  and  compositors  from  making  these 
mistakes;  but  it  does  not  seem  to  be  God's  way  any- 
where to  work  miracles  for  us  where  our  own  careful 
use  of  the  abilities  He  has  given  would  suffice  for  the 
purpose. 

§  3.  Although,  owing  to  the  special  care  exercised 
in  transcribing  the  Scriptures,1  the  errors  would  be  in 
most  cases  of  comparatively  trifling  importance,  yet  it 
is  evident  from  what  has  been  said  about  the  growth 

i  As  an  interesting  instance  of  the  care  exercised  in  transcribing  im- 
portant documents,  Irenxus,  Bishop  of  Lyons,  in  the  second  century, 
thus  writes  in  one  of  his  own  books :  "  Whosoever  thou  art  who  shalt 
transcribe  this  book,  I  charge  thee  with  an  oath  by  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  and  by  His  glorious  appearing,  in  which  He  cometh  to  judge 
the  quick  and  dead,  that  thou  carefully  compare  what  thou  hast  tran- 
scribed, and  correct  it  according  to  this  copy  whence  thou  hast  tran- 
scribed it,  and  thou  transcribe  this  oath  in  like  manner,  and  place  it 
in  thy  copy."  Farther  on  I  shall  have  to  notice  the  solemn  rev- 
ercntial  care  bestowed  by  the  Hebrew  scribes  on  copies  of  the  Old 
Testament 


SOURCES  OF  OUR  BIBLE.  13 

of  copyists'  errors,  that  in  the  course  of  the  centuries 
before  the  invention  of  printing,  Bible  manuscripts 
might  easily  have  grown  very  faulty  indeed.  Therefore 
the  printed  Bibles,  taken  hastily  from  these  modern 
and  probably  corrupt  manuscripts,  would  need  a 
thorough  revision,  and  this  revision  would  need  to  be 
repeated  again  and  again,  as  facilities  increased,  till 
the  Scriptures  were  as  nearly  as  possible  as  they  left 
the  inspired  writers'  hands. 

But  how  is  this  revision  to  be  accomplished  ?  Of 
course,  if  the  original  writings  had  remained,  it  would 
be  quite  a  simple  operation,  as  a  careful  comparison 
with  them  would  at  any  time  discover  whatever  had 
need  of  correction.  But,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say, 
the  original  writings  have  long  since  disappeared.  Some 
of  them,  written  on  the  common  writing  material  of 
the  day, — the  papyrus  paper  referred  to  in  2  John,  ver. 
12, — very  soon  got  worn  out  from  use,1  others  were 
lost  or  destroyed  in  the  early  Christian  persecutions. 
In  any  case  they  have  totally  disappeared. 

How  then  is  revision  to  be  accomplished  ?  In  the 
absence  of  these  original  manuscripts,  what  sources  of 
information  are  open  to  Bible  revisers  ? 

§  4.  For  answer  let  us  turn  from  the  ancient  record 
chest,  whose  contents  are  now  irrecoverably  lost,  and 

1  Jerome  tells  of  such  a  library  in  Csesarea,  already  partly  destroyed 
within  a  century  after  its  formation,  and  of  the  endeavors  of  two 
presbyters  to  restore  the  manuscripts  by  copying  them  on  parchment. 


14  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

imagine  beneath  some  oaken  library  roof  a  vast  mass 
of  manuscripts,  piled  up  before  us  in  THREE  separate 
heaps,— manuscripts  of  very  varied  kind— stained  and 
torn  old  parchments — books  of  faded  purple,  lettered 
with  silver — beautifully  designed  ornamental  pages — 
bundles  of  fine  vellum,  yellow  with  age,  bright  even 
yet  with  the  gold  and  vermilion  laid  on  by  pious 
hands  a  thousand  years  since — in  many  shapes,  in 
many  colors,  in  many  languages, — thousands  of  old 
Scripture  writings  reaching  back  for  1500  years. 

This  pile  represents  the  great  Biblical  treasures 
stored  up  to-day  in  the  various  libraries  of  Europe — 
the  Scriptures  of  all  the  ages  almost  from  apostolic 
times.  And  here  in  this  mass  of  old  manuscripts  is 
the  material  accessible  to  scholars  for  the  purpose  of 
Bible  revision. 

In  these  piles  we  shall  find  three  different  classes  of 
writings.  Here  at  the  end  those  faded  parchments, 
with  the  crowded  square  lettering,  are  copies  in  the 
>  original  languages  of  the  different  Scriptures  contained 
in  the  old  record  chest.  These  are  known  as  Biblical 
"MANUSCRIPTS,"  for  though  all  those  early  Scriptures 
are  of  course  written  by  the  hand,  the  name  manu- 
scripts has  been  by  common  consent  of  scholars  ap- 
propriated to  the  copies  in  the  original  tongue. 

But  those  farther  on  are  evidently  different  in 
language,  the  writing,  at  least  of  the  few  whose  pages 
are  visible,  being  so  very  unlike  the  others.  That 


SOURCES  OF  OUR  BIBLE.  15 

open  manuscript  on  the  top,  written  all  over  in  run- 
ning lines  and  loops,  is  a  Syriac  translation,  the  two 
next  are  Coptic  and  Latin,  and  all  these  are  ANCIENT 
VERSIONS,  i.e.,  translations  of  the  Bible  into  the  lan- 
guages of  early  Christendom,  some  of  them  repre- 
senting the  Scriptures  of  about  fifty  years  after  the 
apostles. 

The  contents  of  the  third  pile,  though  a  good  deal 
resembling  the  Biblical  manuscripts  in  appearance,  are 
not  even  books  of  the  Scriptures  at  all,  but  WRITINGS 
OF  THE  EARLY  CHRISTIAN  FATHERS  from  the  second  to 
the  fifth  century.  The  use  of  these  we  shall  see  after- 
ward. 

The  science  that  deals  with  this  mass  of  evidence  is 
called  "textual"  criticism,  a  science  which,  though 
only  in  its  infancy  when  our  Authorized  Version  was 
issued,  has  reached  in  the  present  day  a  very  high  de- 
gree of  perfection.  Suppose  then  our  revisers,  men 
skilled  in  this  study,  are  occupied  on  say  a  passage  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  desiring  to  present  it  as 
nearly  as  possible  as  it  left  the  hands  of  St.  Paul,  how 
will  they  make  use  of  this  mass  of  evidence  ? 

I.  They  will  search  for  the  -very  oldest  Greek  man- 
uscripts in  which  the  Epistle  occurs,  for,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  the  oldest  are  likely  to  be  the  most  cor- 
rect, and  they  will  get  as  many  as  possible  of  them  to 
compare  them  together  for  the  eliminating  any  errors 
that  may  have  crept  in,  for  it  is  evident  that  if  a  num- 


16  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

ber  of  copies  are  made  of  the  same  original,  even 
should  each  of  the  copyists  have  erred,  no  two  are 
likely  to  make  exactly  the  same  error,  therefore  a  false 
reading  in  any  one  can  often  be  corrected  by  com- 
parison with  the  others. 

II.  Then  they  will  examine  the  ancient  versions,  and 
see  how  the  passage  in  question  was  read  in  Syriac 
and  Latin  and  other  ancient  languages  nearly  1700 
years  ago. 

III.  But  what  use  can  they  make  of  the  rest  of  the 
parchments — those    writings    of  the  early  Christian 
Fathers  ?    A  very  important  use.    They  search  these 
carefully  for  quotations  from  this  Epistle.    These  early 
Fathers  quoted  Scripture  so  largely  in  their  contro- 
versies that  it  has  been  said  if  all  the  other  sources  of 
the  Bible  were  lost,  we  could  recover  the  greater  part 
of  it  from  their  writings.    The  most  important  of 
them  lived  in  the  second,  third,  and  fourth  centuries, 
and  as  they  of  course  quote  from  the  Scriptures  in  use 
in  their  time,  it  is  like  going  back  sixteen  hundred 
years  to  ask  men,  How  did  your  Scripture  render  this 
passage  of  St.  Paul?    Unfortunately  their  quotations 
seem  often  made  from  memory,  which  a  good  deal 
spoils  the  value  of  their  testimony. 

The  sources  of  information,  then,  open  to  revisers 
may  be  briefly  summed  up  as  — 
I.    Manuscripts.      II.    Versions.      III.    Quotations.1 

» See  Diagram  facing  the  title-page. 


PHOTOGRAPH  OF  ANCIENT  GREEK  MANUSCRIPTS: 
(From  Westwood's  Paleographia  Sacra  Pictoria.) 

1.  Scrap  of  a  famous  Greek  Manuscript  of  Genesis,  (Codex  Geneseos 

Cottonianus). 

2.  Portions  of  its  writing,  full  size. 

•}.  Fac-simile   of   the   Alexandrian   Codex   in   the   British   Museum. 

4.  A  portion  of  a  qth  Century  Manuscript. 

5.  Beginning  of  2pth  Psalm  on  Papyrus  in  the  British  Museum. 


SOURCES  OF  OUR  BIBLE.  17 

Each   of  these  will  be  treated  of  more  fully  in  the 
following  chapters. 

§  5.  Now  the  reason  that  so  much  has  been  said 
about  the  possible  errors  of  copyists  and  our  means  of 
correcting  them  is  that  we  may  be  in  a  position  to 
understand  clearly  the  reason  of  the  last  Bible  re- 
vision and  what  grounds  the  revisers  had  for  altering 
anything. 

First,  then,  we  have  access  to  a  great  many  more 
and  older  manuscripts  and  versions  and  quotations 
than  the  men  who  prepared  the  Authorized  Version 
had  ever  heard  of. 

Besides,  our  scholars  understand  those  ancient  lan- 
guages and  the  science  of  textual  criticism  far  better 
than  did  the  scholars  of  King  James'  time. 

And  to  these  we  may  add  a  third  reason,  one  which 
would  always  make  Bible  revision  a  necessity,  even  if 
there  were  no  advances  in  scholarship  or  manuscript 
discoveries — I  mean  the  changes  owing  to  the  natural 
growth  of  language.  More  than  200  words  in  the 
Authorized  Version  have  thus  changed  their  mean- 
ing, e.g.,  carriages,  comfort,  common,  conversation, 
damnation,  let,  malice,  mortify,  prevent,  master, 
quick;  also  phrases  such  as,  to  take  thought,  &c.,  and 
the  change  often  affects  the  meaning  of  important 
passages. 

Therefore  we  are  able  to  detect  faults  even  in  our 


18  HOW    WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

almost  perfect  Authorized  Version — mistakes  here  and 
there  which  scholars  have  known  of  for  some  time 
past;  verses  where  the  rendering  needed  to  be  im- 
proved, and  in  a  few  instances  passages  whose  right 
to  stand  in  the  Bible  at  all  was  very  doubtful.  In 
such  cases  I  need  hardly  say  that  no  amount  of  senti- 
ment about  our  grand  old  Bible  should  prevent  our 
making  the  corrections  required. 

In  the  following  chapters  we  shall  go  through  in 
more  detail  this  mass  of  ancient  manuscript  evidence 
accessible  to  our  revisers,  and  examine  some  of  the 
oldest  and  most  important  writings,  that  we  may  the 
better  understand  what  facilities  scholars  have  at  the 
present  day  for  undertaking  a  Bible  revision. 


CHAPTER  II. 

ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS. 

The  Oldest  Bibles  in  the  World.  §  I.  The  Vatican  Manuscript. 
§  2.  The  Sinaitic  Manuscript.  §  3.  The  Alexandrian.  §  4. 
Palimpsests.  §  5.  The  Manuscript  of  Beza.  §  6.  Cursive 
Manuscripts.  §  7.  Old  Testament  Revision. 

LET  us  still  keep  imaged  before  our  minds  the  triple 
pile  of  Biblical  writings  to  be  examined. 

We  come  first  to  the  MANUSCRIPTS,  the  copies l  of  the 
Scripture  in  the  original  tongues.  Of  the  Greek  there 
is  quite  a  large  number — more  than  1 500 — before  us, 
and  from  the  difference  in  their  condition  and  general 
appearance  one  is  inclined  to  suspect  that  they  must 
vary  a  good  deal  in  age,  and  therefore  probably  in 
value.  The  question  of  determining  the  age  of  a 
manuscript  is  a  very  intricate  one;  but  it  should  make 
our  inspection  of  these  the  more  interesting  if  I  briefly 
state  a  few  easy  marks  to  guide  us : 

The  form  of  the  letters  is  the  chief  guide.  The 
oldest  and  therefore  most  valuable  are  written  in  capital 
letters,  and  without  any  division  between  the  words, 
as  if  we  should  write 

NOWWHENJSWASBORN1NBETHLEHEMOFJ. 
These  are  called  uncial  manuscripts.     The  modern 

!The  reader  should  keep  this  distinction  clearly  before  him  to  pre- 
vent confusion.  MANUSCRiprs=copies  in  the  original  tongue.  VER- 
SlONS=translations  into  other  tongues. 

19 


20  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

are  written  in  a  running  hand  like  our  writing,  and 
are  therefore  called  cursive.  (It  will  be  useful  to 
remember  these  names,  as  they  frequently  occur  in 
Bible  commentaries,  and  in  criticisms  of  the  Revised 
Version.) 

Then  again,  initial  letters,  miniatures,  and  in  general 
any  ornamentation  of  manuscripts,  marks  them  as  of 
comparatively  late  date. 

Far  the  greater  number  of  the  manuscripts  before 
us  are  written  in  the  cursive  hand,  many  of  them 
beautifully  illuminated  and  ornamented  with  exquisite 
miniatures  and  initials.  But  we  turn  at  once  from 
these  to  their  less  attractive  companions,  those  few 
faded,  worn  parchments  with  the  old  uncial  letters. 
Notice  especially  those  three  at  the  end  bound  in 
square  book  form;  they  are  plain,  faded-looking  doc- 
uments, with  little  about  them  to  attract  attention,  but 
these  three  manuscripts  are  among  the  greatest  treas- 
ures the  Christian  Church  possesses — the  oldest  copies 
of  the  Bible  in  the  world!  They  are  named  respec- 
>  lively  the  Vatican,  Sinaitic,  and  Alexandrian  Manu- 
scripts. They  have  been  largely  used  in  the  recent 
Bible  Revision,  but  they  were  not  any  of  them  accessible 
to  those  who  prepared  the  Authorised  Version  in  161 1. 

These  three  oldest  manuscripts  are  curiously  enough 
in  possession  of  the  three  great  branches  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  The  ALEXANDRIAN  (called  for  shortness 
Codex  A)  belongs  to  Protestant  England,  and  is  kept 


ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS.  21 

in  the  manuscript  room  of  the  British  Museum;  the 
VATICAN  (Codex  B)  is  in  the  Vatican  Library  at  Rome ; 
and  the  SINAITIC  (Codex  Aleph),  which  has  only  lately 
been  discovered,  is  one  of  the  treasures  of  the  Greek 
Church  at  St.  Petersburg. 

These  manuscripts  show  us  the  Bible  as  it  existed 
soon  after  the  apostolic  days.  There  has  been  a  good 
deal  of  discussion  about  their  age,  which  need  not  be 
entered  on  here;  but  we  shall  not  be  far  from  the 
truth  if  we  say  roundly  that  they  range  from  about 
300  to  450  A.  D.  Therefore  the  oldest  is  about  as  dis- 
tant in  time  from  the  original  inspired  writings  as  the 
.Revised  is  from  the  Authorized  Version.  All  the  Greek 
manuscripts  before  this  time  seem  to  have  perished  in 
the  terrible  persecutions  which  were  directed  not  only 
against  the  Christians  themselves,  but  also  and  with 
special  force  against  their  sacred  writings. 

§  i.  THE  VATICAN  MANUSCRIPT.  Each  of  these  three 
manuscripts  has  its  history.  The  most  ancient,  it  is 
generally  agreed,  is  the  Vatican  Manuscript,  which  has 
lain  at  least  four  or  five  hundred  years  in  the  Vatican 
Library  at  Rome.  One  is  much  inclined  to  grudge  the 
Roman  Church  the  possession  of  this  our  most  valu- 
able manuscript;  for  the  papal  authorities  have  been 
very  jealous  guardians,  and  most  persons  capable  of 
examining  it  aright  have  been  refused  access  to  it. 
Dr.  Tregelles,  one  of  our  most  eminent  students  of 


22  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

textual  criticism,  made  an  attempt;  but  he  says  they 
would  not  let  him  open  the  volume  without  searching 
his  pockets,  and  depriving  him  of  pens  and  ink  and 
paper;  the  two  priests  told  off  to  watch  him  would 
try  to  distract  his  attention  if  he  seemed  too  intent  on 
any  passage,  and  if  he  studied  any  part  of  it  too  long 
they  would  snatch  away  the  book.  However,  it  has 
of  late  years  become  easily  accessible  through  the  ex- 
cellent fac-similes  made  by  order  of  Pope  Pius  IX., 
which  may  be  seen  in  our  chief  public  libraries. 

The  manuscript  consists  of  about  700  leaves  of  the 
finest  vellum,  about  a  foot  square,  bound  together  in 
book  form.  It  is  not  quite  perfect,  having  lost  Gen. 
i.-xlvi.,  as  well  as  Psalms  cv.-cxxxvii.,  and  all  after 
Heb.  ix.  14  of  the  New  Testament.  The  original 
writing  must  have  been  beautifully  delicate  and  finely 
formed.  There  are  only  a  few  words  left  here  and 
there  by  which  to  judge  of  this;  for  from  one  end  to 
the  other,  the  whole  manuscript  has  been  travelled 
over  by  the  pen  of  some  meddlesome  scribe  of  about 
the  tenth  century.  Probably  he  was  afraid  of  the 
precious  writing  fading  out  if  it  were  not  thus  inked 
over;  but  if  so  his  fears  were  quite  groundless,  for 
here  are  some  of  the  words  which  he  passed  over 
(considering  them  incorrect)  remaining  still  perfectly 
clear  and  legible  after  the  lapse  of  1 500  years.  Each 
page  contains  three  columns,  and  the  writing  is  in 
capital  letters,  without  any  division  between  the 


ANCIENT  MANUSCEJPTS.  & 

words.  This  makes  it  less  easy  to  read,  but  of  course 
it  was  done  to  save  space  at  a  time  when  writing  ma- 
terial was  very  expensive. 

To  carry  this  saving  further,  words  are  written 
smaller  and  more  crowded  as  they  approach  the  end 
of  a  line,  and  for  the  same  reason  was  adopted  the 
plan  of  contracted  words,  which  has  often  been  the 
cause  of  manuscript  errors.  First,  they  cut  off  the 
final  M's  and  N's  at  the  end  of  a  word,  marking  the 
omission  by  a  line  across  the  top,  as  if  we  should 
write  LONDO  for  London;  then  they  proceeded  to  the 
dropping  of  final  syllables,  and  from  that  to  the  short- 
ening of  frequently  recurring  words,  like  the  name 
Jesus  or  God.  We  might  fairly  represent  these  pecul- 
iarities (which  are  common  to  all  the  early  manu- 
scripts) by  writing  thus  in  English  (Titus  ii.  n,  12): 

FORTHEGRACEOFG"D"BRlNG,No 
SALVATION  HATH  APPEAR  ED 
TOALLMNTEACHINGUSTHATDEN 
YINGUNGODLINESSANDWOR 
LDLYLUSTWESHOULDLIVESOB 
ERLYANDGODLYINTHISPRESENT 
EV I  L  WO  R  LD  LOOK  I  NG  FOR  THAT 

One  remark  more  before  we  lay  it  aside.  You  will 
notice  in  the  Revised  New  Testament  the  passage  at 
the  end  of  St.  Mark's  Gospel  printed  in  as  in  some  de- 
gree doubtful,  and  a  notice  in  the  margin  that  "the 
two  oldest  Greek  manuscripts  omit  these  verses." 


24  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

Now  this  and  the  Sinaitic  are  the  two  manuscripts  re- 
ferred to,  and  if  we  turn  to  the  place  you  will  see  that 
this  one,  while  omitting  the  passage,  curiously  enough 
leaves  a  blank  space  for  it  on  the  page,  showing  that 
the  scribe  knew  of  its  existence,  but  was  undecided 
whether  he  should  put  it  in  or  not. 

§  2.  THE  SINAITIC  MANUSCRIPT.  There  is  no  need  of 
describing  this  celebrated  manuscript,  which  on  the 
whole  very  much  resembles  the  other;  but  the  story 
of  its  discovery  about  forty  years  ago  is  full  of  inter-, 
est.  It  is  called  the  Sinaitic  Manuscript  from  the  place 
where  it  was  found  by  the  great  German  scholar,  Dr. 
Tischendorf.  His  whole  life  was  given  up  to  the  dis- 
covery and  study  of  ancient  manuscripts  of  the  Bible, 
and  he  travelled  all  over  the  East,  searching  every  old 
library  he  could  get  into  for  the  purpose;  but  it  was 
quite  unexpectedly  in  St.  Catharine's  Convent,  at  the 
foot  of  Mount  Sinai,  that  he  discovered  this  the  "  pearl 
of  all  his  researches,"  as  he  calls  it. 

In  visiting  the  library  of  the  convent  in  the  month 
of  May,  1844,  he  perceived  in  the  middle  of  the  great 
hall  a  basket  full  of  old  parchments,  and  the  librarian 
told  him  that  two  heaps  of  similar  old  documents  had 
already  been  used  for  the  fires.  What  was  his  surprise 
to  find  in  the  basket  a  number  of  sheets  of  a  copy  of 
the  Septuagint  (Greek)  Old  Testament,  the  most 
ancient-looking  manuscript  that  he  had  ever  seen. 


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ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS.  25 

The  authorities  of  the  convent  allowed  him  to  take 
away  about  forty  sheets,  as  they  were  only  intended 
for  the  fire;  but  he  displayed  so  much  satisfaction 
with  his  gift  that  the  suspicion  of  the  monks  was 
aroused  as  to  the  value  of  the  manuscript,  and  they 
refused  to  give  him  any  more. 

He  returned  to  Germany,  and  with  his  precious 
sheets  made  a  great  sensation  in  the  literary  world. 
But  he  took  very  good  care  not  to  tell  where  he  had 
got  them,  as  he  still  had  hopes  of  securing  the  remain- 
der; and  he  soon  had  reason  to  congratulate  himself 
on  his  caution,-  for  the  English  Government  at  once 
sent  out  a  scholar  to  buy  up  any  valuable  Greek  manu- 
scripts he  could  lay  hands  on,  and  poor  Dr.  Tischen- 
dorf  was  very  uneasy  lest  the  Englishman  should 
stumble  upon  the  old  basket  on  Mount  Sinai.  You 
may  judge  of  his  relief  when  he  saw  the  Englishman's 
report  soon  after,  telling  of  his  failure;  "for,"  said  he, 
"after  the  visit  of  such  a  critic  as  Dr.  Tischendorf,  I 
could  not,  of  course,  expect  any  success."  The  doctor 
seems  quite  to  enjoy  the  telling  this  part  of  the  story. 

He  tried  next,  by  means  of  an  influential  friend  at 
the  court  of  Egypt,  to  procure  the  rest  of  the  manu- 
script, but  without  success.  "The  monks  of  the  con- 
vent," wrote  his  friend,  "have  since  your  departure 
learned  the  value  of  the  parchments,  and  now  they 
will  not  part  with  them  at  any  price."  So  he  paid 
another  visit  to  Mount  Sinai,  but  could  only  find  one 


26  tiO  W   \VE  GOT  OVB  &IBL& 

sheet,  containing  eleven  lines  of  the  book  of  Genesis, 
which  showed  him  that  the  manuscript  originally  con- 
tained the  entire  Old  Testament. 

To  shorten  the  story,  I  must  pass  over  fifteen  years, 
during  which  time  he  had  enlisted  the  sympathy  of 
the  Emperor  of  Russia,  and  in  1859  we  find  him  again 
at  the  convent  with  a  commission  from  the  Emperor 
himself.  However,  he  found  very  little  of  any  value, 
and  had  made  his  arrangements  to  leave  without  ac- 
complishing his  mission,  when  a  quite  unexpected 
event  brought  about  all  that  he  wished  for.  The  very 
evening  before  he  was  to  leave  he  was  walking  in  the 
grounds  with  the  steward  of  the  convent,  and  as  they 
returned  the  monk  asked  him  into  his  cell  to  take  some 
refreshment.  Scarcely  had  they  entered  the  cell,  when, 
resuming  his  former  conversation,  the  monk  said:  4<  I 
too  have  read  a  copy  of  that  Septuagint."  And  so 
saying  he  took  down  a  bulky  bundle,  wrapped  in  red 
cloth,  and  laid  it  on  the  table.  Tischendorf  opened 
the  parcel,  and  to  his  great  surprise  found  not  only 
those  very  fragments  that  he  had  seen  fifteen  years 
before,  but  also  other  parts  of  the  Old  Testament,  the 
New  Testament  complete,  and  some  of  the  Apocryphal 
Books. 

Full  of  joy,  which  this  time  he  had  the  self-com- 
mand to  conceal,  he  asked  in  a  careless  way  for  per- 
mission to  look  over  it  in  his  bedroom.  "And  there 
by  myself,"  he  says,  "  1  gave  way  to  my  transports  of 


ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS.  27 

joy.  1  knew  that  I  held  in  my  hand  one  of  the 
most  precious  Biblical  treasures  in  existence,  a  docu- 
ment whose  age  and  importance  exceeded  that  of 
any  I  had  ever  seen  after  twenty  years'  study  of  the 
subject." 

At  length,  through  the  Emperor's  influence,  he  suc- 
ceeded in  obtaining  the  precious  manuscript,  which  is 
now  stored  up  in  the  Library  of  St.  Petersburg,  the 
greatest  treasure  which  the  Eastern  Church  possesses. 
Strange  that  after  all  the  vicissitudes  of  fifteen  cen- 
turies it  should  at  length  be  restored  to  the  world  only 
forty  years  since!  It  is  now  easily  accessible  to  schol- 
ars through  its  fac-similes  in  all  our  great  libraries.  See 
the  photograph  at  p.  24,  which  represents  the  close  of 
St.  Mark's  gospel  and  the  beginning  of  St.  Luke's.  We 
have  purposely  chosen  this  part  of  the  manuscript  for 
illustration.  We  have  already  (page  23)  mentioned 
the  fact  that  the  Revised  Version  has  printed  the  last 
twelve  verses  of  St.  Mark  as  in  some  degree  doubtful, 
and  has  put  a  notice  in  the  margin  that  "the  two 
oldest  Greek  Manuscripts  omit  these  verses."  This 
and  the  Vatican  Manuscript  are  the  two  referred  to. 
The  evidence  of  the  Vatican  manuscript,  however,  is 
very  doubtful,  for  though  it  omits  these  verses  it 
leaves  the  whole  following  column  blank  as  well  as 
the  remainder  of  the  column  on  which  v.  8  is  written. 
Nowhere  else  does  it  leave  such  a  blank  at  the  end  of 
a  book,  and  the  fact  indicates  that  the  scribe  knew  of 


28  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

the  existence  of  the  passage  and  was  uncertain  whether 
to  put  it  i-n  or  not. 

The  evidence  of  the  Sinaitic,  however,  is  quite  un- 
hesitating. St.  Mark's  gospel  evidently  ends  on  this 
page  as  photographed,  and  any  one  who  can  read 
Greek  can  see  in  this  photograph  that  it  ends  with  the 
words  ephobounto gar,  "for  they  were  afraid"  (v.  8). 

It  should  be  interesting  for  the  reader  to  be  able  to 
see  the  very  passage  on  which  the  Revisers  depend  so 
much.  This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  question 
whether  the  Revisers  are  right  or  not.  But  we  may 
here  say  that  those  two  old  manuscripts  with  some 
statements  of  Eusebius,  the  great  church  historian,  are 
the  only  important  evidence  against  the  passage  in  ques- 
tion, while  nearly  all  the  rest  of  the  manuscripts  and 
most  of  the  Versions  bear  testimony  on  the  other  side. 

§  3.  THE  ALEXANDRIAN  MANUSCRIPT  (Codex  A).  This 
youngest  of  our  three  great  manuscripts  has  special 
interest  for  us,  being  in  the  custody  of  England,  and 
preserved  with  our  great  national  treasures  in  the 
British  Museum.  It  was  presented  to  Charles  I.  by 
Cyril  Lucar,  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  A.  D.  1628, 
and  therefore  arrived  in  England  seventeen  years  too 
late  to  be  of  use  in  preparing  our  Authorized  Version. 
The  Arabic  inscription  on  the  first  sheet,  states  that  it 
was  written  "by  the  hand  of  Thekla  the  Martyr." 

Only  ten  leaves  are  missing  from  the  Old  Testament 


ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS.  29 

part,  but  the  New  Testament  is  much  more  defective, 
having  lost  twenty-five  leaves  from  the  beginning  of 
St.  Matthew,  two  from  St.  John,  and  three  from  Co- 
rinthians.  It  is  written  two  columns  on  a  page,  the 
Vatican  and  Sinaitic  having  respectively  three  and 
four.  The  original  can  be  seen  at  the  British  Museum, 
but  copies  which  exactly  represent  it  are,  like  those  of 
the  other  two,  kept  in  our  chief  public  libraries.  A 
small  piece  of  it  has  been  photographed  in  the  plate  of 
the  five  Greek  manuscripts.  See  plate  facing  page  16. 

§  4.  Here  is  the  Codex  of  Ephraem,  a  very  curious 
manuscript,  all  stained  and  soiled,  and  seemingly  of 
little  value,  as  it  is  written  in  quite  a  modern  hand.  It 
requires  a  closer  examination  to  notice  under  that 
straggling  handwriting  the  faint,  faded  lines  of  old 
uncial  letters.  This  is  what  is  called  a  Palimpsest  or 
Rescript  Manuscript,  i.e.,  one  that  has  had  its  original 
contents  rubbed  out  to  make  room  for  some  other 
writing.  We  noticed  already  contractions,  &c.,  adopted 
to  save  parchment  at  a  time  when  it  was  very  expen- 
sive. For  the  same  purpose  scribes  sometimes  used 
old  parchments  that  had  been  written  on  before,  and, 
by  carefully  scraping  and  pumicing  out  the  old  letters, 
made  the  skin  tolerably  fit  for  use  again. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  in  many  cases  the  writing 
thus  blotted  out  was  of  far  greater  value  than  that 
which  replaced  it,  and  especially  is  it  so  in  this  case, 


30  HOW   WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

where  an  ancient  and  valuable  copy  of  the  Scriptures 
was  in  the  twelfth  century  coolly  scrubbed  out  to 
make  room  for  some  theological  discourses  of  St.  Eph- 
raem,  an  old  Syrian  Father. 

The  old  writing,  however,  had  not  been  so  thor- 
oughly rubbed  but  that  some  dim  traces  remained, 
which  drew  attention  to  the  manuscript  about  200 
years  since.  It  was  very  difficult  to  decipher  the  old 
hand  till  some  chemical  preparation  applied  in  1834 
revived  a  good  part  of  it,  though  it  very  much  stained 
and  defaced  the  vellum.  The  MS.  was  then  found  to 
contain  a  considerable  portion  of  both  Old  and  New 
Testaments,  and  it  is  considered  almost  if  not  quite  as 
old  as  the  Alexandrian.  It  was  brought  into  France 
by  Queen  Catherine  de  Medici  of  evil  memory  and  is 
now  preserved  in  the  Royal  Library  at  Paris.  A  por- 
tion of  it  is  reproduced  on  the  opposite  page. 

§  5.  There  is  just  one  more  uncial  manuscript  that 
deserves  mention.  This  is  the  Codex  Bezae  which  is 
in  the  University  Library  at  Cambridge.  It  was  pre- 
sented to  the  University  in  1581,  by  Theodore  Beza, 
the  friend  of  Calvin,  with  a  statement  in  his  own 
handwriting  that  he  had  got  it  in  1562,  from  the  mon- 
astery of  St.  Irenaeus,  at  Lyons — (Lyons  was  sacked 
in  that  year).  It  is  somewhat  later  in  date  than  the 
other  great  Uncials  already  mentioned  and  is  written 
in  Greek  and  Latin  on  opposite  pages. 


tflflM^sj 

MOllfcixf*  SS.w 

tf<irtl*4%tvFll 

moti^m 


7-       -       r      _  3,3 


^Ippl-^f^ 

rSlliit^Fiki 

IllMlM^ll 

^••s^JC-oWtfr  fc/^i 


ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS.  31 

It  is  in  many  ways  a  curious  and  interesting  docu- 
ment. It  shows  part  of  a  very  old  Greek  and  a  very 
old  Latin  Bible  which  do  not  always  exactly  corre- 
spond. It  shows  traces  of  the  work  of  several  correc- 
tors, some  of  them  very  ancient.  One  can  see  how 
the  original  scribe,  whenever  he  made  a  slip,  washed 
it  out  with  a  sponge,  and  how  he  corrected  with  a  pen 
nearly  empty  of  ink.  Later  correctors  scraped  out 
with  a  knife  what  seemed  to  them  incorrect,  and  so 
have  in  some  places  spoiled  the  manuscript.  But  the 
most  curious  thing  is  the  daring  interpolations  in  the 
text,  most  of  which  are  entirely  unsupported  by  other 
manuscripts.  Most  of  them  are  probably  worthless 
but  yet  it  is  not  improbable  that  some  of  them  may 
contain  lost  sayings  and  deeds  of  Our  Lord,  such  as 
St.  John  refers  to  in  chapter  xxi.  25,  "there  are  also 
many  other  things  which  Jesus  did,  the  which  if  they 
should  be  written  every  one  I  suppose  that  even  the 
world  itself  would  not  contain  the  books  that  should 
be  written." 

Our  photograph  facing  page  32,  shows  a  very  famous 
one,  of  which  even  so  cautious  a  writer  as  Dr.  West- 
cott  says  "It  is  evident  that  it  rests  on  some  real  inci- 
dent." It  occurs  in  St.  Luke  vi.,  between  the  fourth 
and  fifth  verses.  It  is  in  the  midst  of  the  Pharisee's 
disputes  with  Our  Lord  about  the  keeping  of  the 
Sabbath.  For  convenience  sake  the  Latin  is  photo- 
graphed underneath  the  Greek  instead  of  opposite  it. 


32  HOW   WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

The  reader  can  easily  follow  the  Latin  on  the  photo- 
graph. 

quibus  non  licebat  manducare  si  non  soils  sacerdotibus 
-which  it  is  not  lawful  to  eat  but  for  the  priests  alone. 

This  is  the  end  of  v.  4  and  then  follows  the  interpo- 
lation : 

EODEM  DIE  VIDENS 

QUENDAM  OPERANTEM  SABBATO  ET  DIXIT  ILLI 

HOMO  SIQUIDEM  SCIS  QUOD  FACIS 

BEATUS  ES.  SI  AUTEM  NESCIS  MALEDICTUS 

ET  TRABARICATOR  LEGIS. 

THE  SAME  DAY  SEEING 

A  CERTAIN  MAN  WORKING  ON  THE  SABBATH  HE  SAID  TO  HIM 
MAN  IF  INDEED  THOU  KNOWEST  WHAT  THOU  ART  DOING 
HAPPY    ART  THOU.      BUT   IF  THOU  KNOWEST  NOT  THOU  ART  AC- 
CURSED AND  A  TRANSGRESSOR  OF  THE  LAW. 

§  6.  All  that  we  have  examined  up  to  this  date  are 
of  uncial  type,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  mark  of 
their  antiquity.  Of  these  Uncials  we  have  altogether 
about  a  hundred. 

Of  the  more  modern  manuscripts,  in  the  cursive  or 
running  hand,  there  are  more  than  1500  accessible 
to  scholars.  It  has  been  already  remarked  that  it  is 
quite  possible  for  a  comparatively  modern  manuscript 
to  possess  a  high  value,  as,  for  example,  suppose  a 
scribe  of  the  fifteenth  century  had  copied  in  running 
hand  direct  from  the  "Vatican."  For  this  and  other 
reasons  some  of  our  Cursives  are  very  important  evi- 
dence. There  is  one,  for  instance,  the  "  Queen  of  the 


ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS.  33 

Cursives,"  as  it  is  called,  which,  for  its  valuable  read- 
ings, ranks  above  many  a  far  older  Uncial,  and  there 
are  four  others,  quite  modern  in  date  (twelfth  to  four- 
teenth centuries),  which  have  been  shown  by  Profes- 
sor Abbott  and  the  late  Professor  Ferrar,  of  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,1  to  be  transcribed  from  one  and  the 
same  ancient  manuscript,  which  was  probably  little 
later  than  our  Alexandrian  Codex. 

If  we  remember  that  ten  or  twelve  manuscripts,  and 
these  generally  modern,  are  all  we  have  for  ascertain- 
ing the  text  of  most  classical  authors,  it  will  help  us 
to  understand  what  an  enormous  mass  of  evidence 
there  is  available  for  the  purpose  of  Scripture  revision. 

§  7.  The  Hebrew  manuscripts  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment need  occupy  little  time,  the  earliest  we  possess 
dating  no  earlier  than  about  the  tenth  century.  The 
lack  of  early  manuscripts  here  is,  however,  of  less 
importance.  As  far  as  we  can  learn  there  seems  to 
have  been  a  gradual  rough  sort  of  revision  of  the 
Palestine  manuscripts  continually  going  on  almost 
from  the  days  of  Ezra.  About  a  thousand  years  ago 
this  process  of  Hebrew  Manuscript  Revision  came  to 
an  end,  and  thus  at  that  early  date  the  Hebrew  Old 
Testament  was  made  as  nearly  correct  as  the  best 
scholarship  of  the  Jewish  academies  could  make  it, 

*"  Collation  of  Four  Important  Manuscripts,"  by  W.  H.  Ferrar, 
F.  T.  C.  D.,  edited  by  T.  K.  Abbott,  F.  T.  C.  D.  Dublin,  1877. 


34  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

after  which  the  older  manuscripts  gradually  disap- 
peared. 

The  existing  Hebrew  manuscripts,  then,  though  not 
very  old,  are  of  great  authority,  and  all  the  more  so 
owing  to  the  reverence  of  Jewish  scribes  for  the  Word 
of  God,  and  the  consequent  carefulness  of  their  tran- 
scription. So  scrupulous  were  they  that  even  if  a 
manifest  error  were  in  the  copy  they  transcribed  from, 
they  would  not  meddle  with  it  in  the  text,  but  would 
write  in  the  margin  what  the  true  reading  should  be; 
if  they  found  one  letter  larger  than  another,  or  a  word 
running  beyond  the  line,  or  any  other  mere  irregu- 
larity, they  would  copy  it  exactly  as  it  stood.  They 
recorded  how  many  verses  in  each  book,  and  the 
middle  verse  of  each,  and  how  many  verses  began 
with  particular  letters,  &c.,  &c.  Such  exactness,  of 
course,  very  much  lessened  the  danger  of  erroneous 
copying,  and  makes  our  Hebrew  Scriptures  far  more 
trustworthy  than  they  could  otherwise  be. 

The  reason  then  that  there  are  so  few  changes  m 
the  Revised  Old  Testament,  as  compared  with  the 
New,  is  that  we  have  less  need  as  well  as  less  means 
of  making  any  corrections.1  In  fact,  the  chief  grounds 
for  undertaking  Old  Testament  revision  are  the  in- 
creased knowledge  of  Hebrew  and  of  textual  criticism, 

»  It  is  no  reflection  on  the  Old  Testament  Revisers  to  suggest  also 
that  they  could  scarcely  avoid  being  influenced  in  some  degree  by  the 
strong  feeling  exhibited  against  the  many  changes  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment portion. 


ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS.  35 

together  with  the  changes  through  natural  growth  of 
the  English  language  itself.  We  may  add  also,  for 
their  united  evidence  is  very  important,  the  more 
thorough  study  in  late  years  of  the  Septuagint  and 
the  Targums,  together  with  the  Vulgate  and  other 
ancient  versions,  to  be  described  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  III. 

ANCIENT  VERSIONS  AND  QUOTATIONS. 

§  I.  Various  Early  Versions.  §  2.  An  ancient  "  Revised  Bible." 
§  3.  How  Revision  was  regarded  fifteen  centuries  ago.  §  4. 
Advantage  of  this  investigation.  §  5.  Quotations  from  Ancient 
Fathers. 

§  i.  WE  are  to  examine  now  our  second  pile — the 
ANCIENT  VERSIONS,  i.e.,  the  translations  of  the  Bible 
into  the  languages  of  early  Christendom  long  before 
the  oldest  of  our  present  Greek  manuscripts  were 
written.  These  were  the  Bibles  used  by  men,  some 
of  whose  parents  might  easily  have  seen  the  apostles 
themselves,  and  therefore  it  is  evident  that,  even 
though  only  translations,  they  must  often  be  of  great 
value  in  determining  the  original  text. 

There  are  the  old  Syriac  Scriptures,  which  were 
probably  in  use  about  fifty  years  after  the  New  Testa- 
ment was  written,  a  Version  representing  very  nearly 
the  language  of  the  people  among  whom  our  Lord 
moved.  Those  discolored  parchments  beside  them 
are  Egyptian,  Ethiopic,  and  Armenian  Versions,  which 
would  be  more  useful  if  our  scholars  understood  these 
languages  better;  and  the  beautiful  silver-lettered  book, 
with  its  leaves  of  purple  parchment,  is  the  Version  of 
Ulfilas,  bishop  of  the  fierce  Gothic  tribes  about  A.  D. 

36 


ANCIENT  VERSIONS  AND  QUOTATIONS.  37 

350. l  Here  are  the  old  Latin,  which,  with  the  Syriac, 
are  the  earliest  of  all  our  Versions,  and  the  most 
valuable  for  the  purpose  of  textual  criticism. 

But  what  is  this  Version  piled  up  in  such  enormous 
numbers,  far  exceeding  that  of  all  the  others  put  to- 
gether, some  of  its  copies,  too,  ornamented  with  ex- 
quisite beauty  ? 

§  2.  It  is  a  Version  which  just  now  should  possess 
very  special  interest  for  English  readers — St.  Jerome's 
Latin  Vulgate,  the  great  ''Revised  Version"  of  the 
ancient  Western  Church.  This  is  its  story. 

Toward  the  end  of  the  fourth  century,  so  many 
errors  had  crept  into  the  old  Latin  Versions,  that  the 
Latin-speaking  churches  were  in  danger  of  losing  the 
pure  Scripture  of  the  apostolic  days.  Just  at  this 
crisis,  when  scholars  were  keenly  feeling  the  need  of 
a  revision,  there  returned  to  Rome  from  his  Bethlehem 
hermitage  one  of  the  greatest  scholars  and  holiest  men 
of  the  day,  Eusebius  Hieronymus  better  known  to  us 
as  St.  Jerome,  and  his  high  reputation  pointed  him  out 
at  once  as  the  man  to  undertake  this  important  task. 
Damascus,  bishop  of  Rome,  applied  to  him  for  that 
purpose,  and  Jerome  undertook  the  revision,  though 
he  was  deeply  sensible  of  the  prejudice  which  his 
work  would  arouse  among  those  who,  he  says, 
"thought  that  ignorance  was  holiness."  His  revision 

i  Gibbon  says :  "  He  prudently  suppressed  the  four  books  of  Kings, 
as  they  might  tend  to  irritate  the  fierce  spirit  of  the  barbarians." 


38  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

j 

of  the  New  Testament  was  completed  in  385,  and  the 
Old  Testament  he  afterward  translated  direct  from 
the  original  Hebrew,  a  task  which  probably  no  other 
scholar  of  the  time  would  have  been  capable  of.  We 
shall  better  understand  the  value  of  his  work  if  we 
remember  that  it  is  almost  as  old  as  the  earliest  of  our 
present  Greek  manuscripts,  and  since  Jerome  of  course 
used  the  oldest  manuscripts  to  be  had  in  his  day,  his 
authorities  would  have  probably  extended  back  to  the 
days  of  the  apostles. 

No  other  work  has  ever  had  such  an  influence  on 
the  history  of  the  Bible.  For  more  than  a  thousand 
years  it  was  the  parent  of  every  version  of  the  Scrip- 
tures1 in  Western  Europe,  and  even  now,  when  the 
Greek  and  Hebrew  manuscripts  are  so  easily  ac- 
cessible, the  Rhemish  and  Douay  Testaments  are 
translations  direct  from  the  Vulgate,  and  its  influence 
is  quite  perceptible  even  on  our  own  Authorized 
Version. 

§  3.  How  do  you  think  the  good  people  of  the 
fourth  century  thanked  St.  Jerome  for  his  wonderful 
Bible  ?  Remembering  the  prejudice  which  our  Revised 
Version  excited  not  many  years  ago,  it  is  interesting  to 
recall  the  story  how  the  Revision  of  the  old  monk  of 
Bethlehem  was  received. 

It  was  called  revolutionary  and  heretical;  it  was 

i  See  Diagram  facing  the  title-page, 


ANCIENT  VERSIONS  AND  QUOTATIONS.  39 

pronounced  subversive  of  all  faith  in  Holy  Scriptures; 
it  was  said  to  be  an  impious  altering  of  the  Inspired 
Word  of  God.  In  fact,  for  centuries  after,  everything 
was  said  against  it  that  ignorant  bigotry  could  suggest 
to  bring  it  into  disrepute.  The  Christians  of  that  day 
had  their  old  Bible,  which  they  venerated  highly  and 
believed  to  be  quite  correct,  and  probably  the  sound 
of  its  sentences  was  as  musical  in  their  ears,  who 
could  associate  them  with  the  holiest  moments  of 
their  lives,  as  that  of  our  beautiful  old  version  is  in 
ours. 

But  St.  Jerome  fought  his  battle,  perhaps  with  more 
temper  than  was  necessary, l  insisting  that  no  amount 
of  sentiment  could  be  a  plea  for  a  faulty  Bible,  and 
that  the  most  venerable  translation  must  give  way  if 
found  to  disagree  with  the  original  text. 

It  is  instructive  to  us  to  see  how  completely  the  tide 
had  turned  at  the  time  of  the  Council  of  Trent,  a  thou- 
sand years  later.  Men  had  then  got  as  attached  to  the 
version  of  St.  Jerome  as  those  of  the  fourth  century 

1  Thus,  writing  to  Marcella,  he  mentions  certain  poor  creatures 
(homunculos),  who  studiously  calumniate  him  for  his  correcting  words 
in  the  Gospels.  "  I  could  afford  to  despise  them,"  he  says,  "  if  I  stood 
upon  my  rights ;  for  a  lyre  is  played  in  vain  to  an  ass.  If  they  do  not 
like  the  water  from  the  pure  fountain-head,  let  them  drink  of  the 
muddy  streams ; "  and  again,  at  the  close  of  the  letter,  he  returns  to 
the  attack  of  those  "  bipedes  asellos  "  (two-legged  donkeys).  "  Let 
them  read,  «  Rejoicing  in  hope,  serving  the  time  ;  '  let  us  read, «  Rejoic- 
ing in  hope,  serving  the  Lord ; '  let  them  consider  that  an  accusation 
should  not  under  any  circumstances  be  received  against  an  elder ;  let 
us  read, '  Against  an  elder  receive  not  »n  accusation  \  but  before  two 
or  three  witnessei,1"  &c,  (Ep,  «8), 


40  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

had  been  to  its  predecessors.  In  fact,  they  seem  al- 
most to  have  forgotten  that  it  was  only  a  translation. 
It  is  the  version  of  the  Church,  they  said,  and  in  her 
own  language;  "Why  should  it  yield  to  Greek  and 
Hebrew  manuscripts,  which  have  been  for  all  these 
hundreds  of  years  in  the  hands  of  Jewish  unbelievers 
and  Greek  schismatics?"  Well,  how  did  they  act? 
They  decreed  in  council  that  the  old  Vulgate  should  be 
considered  correct,  and  to  this  day,  with  all  the  prog- 
ress in  textual  research,  their  Church  has  refused  to 
advance  any  farther, 

"  Resting,  amid  the  rush  of  progression, 
Like  a  frozen  ship  on  a  frozen  sea." 

An  amusing  exhibition  of  the  feeling  at  the  time  is  a 
passage  in  the  preface  to  the  Complutensian  Polyglot 
Bible,  where  the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek  and  the  Latin 
Vulgate  were  printed  in  parallel  columns  side  by  side, 
the  venerable  old  Vulgate  being  in  the  middle,  which 
the  editors  with  grim  humor  compared  to  the  position 
of  our  Lord  between  the  two  thieves  at  the  crucifixion! 
Of  course  they  did  not  mean  any  slight  to  the  original 
Scriptures,  but  their  prejudice  led  them  to  suspect,  or 
to  fancy  they  had  a  right  to  suspect,  that  the  Jews  and 
Greeks  might  have  corrupted  the  manuscript  copies. 

§  4.  This  glance  at  the  Ancient  Versions  will  be 
sufficient  for  our  purpose.  There  is  a  large  number 
now  accessible  to  scholars,  and  every  year  the  study  of 


ANCIENT  VERSIONS  AND  QUOTATIONS.  41 

them  is  increasing.  In  passing,  I  would  point  to  this 
part  of  our  subject  to  illustrate  what  was  said  in  the 
preface  of  the  advantage  indirectly  resulting  from  the 
investigation  of  questions  suggested  by  our  New  Re- 
vision. For  here  we  find  that  at  a  time  when  some 
sceptical  writers  would  have  us  believe  our  New  Tes- 
tament books  were  scarcely  written,  they  had  been 
translated  and  copied  and  re-copied  in  the  languages 
of  early  Christendom;  commentaries  and  harmonies  of 
the  Gospels  had  been  written;  a  list  of  the  books  had 
been  prepared  (of  which  we  have  still  a  portion  called 
the  Muratorian  Fragment),  and  they  were  regarded  in 
all  arguments  between  Christians  of  the  time  as  ref- 
erees having  divine  authority.  All  this  will  be  seen 
still  more  clearly  after  we  have  briefly  glanced  at  the 
third  source  of  information  open  to  revisers : 

§  5.  THE  QUOTATIONS  IN  EARLY  CHRISTIAN  WRITERS. 
The  quantity  of  these  writings  is  great,  but  they  have 
been  up  to  this  time  very  imperfectly  examined.  In 
spite  of  the  disadvantages  of  the  quotations  being 
often  fragmentary,  and  sometimes — as  will  be  seen  in 
the  examples — made  loosely  from  memory,  they  are 
yet  of  great  value  in  determining  the  text  of  ancient 
Bibles,  some  of  them  going  back  to  the  days  of  the 
original  New  Testament  writings.  Let  us  turn  over  a 
few  of  them  at  random,  taking  the  earliest  in  prefer- 
ence. 


42  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

(a.)  Here  is  the  Epistle  of  Barnabas,  which  Doctor 
Tischendorf  found  bound  up  with  his  Sinaitic  Manu- 
script. It  is  supposed,  though  without  good  reason, 
to  have  been  written  by  St.  Paul's  companion;  but 
certainly  it  is  not  much  later  than  his  date.  Notice 
these  expressions:  Beware,  therefore,  lest  it  come 
upon  us  as  it  is  written,  "There  be  many  called  but 
few  chosen; "  again,  "  Give  to  him  that  asketh  thee." 
And  farther  on  he  says,  "that  Christ  chose  as  His 
apostles  men  who  were  sinners,  because  He  came  not 
to  call  the  righteous,  but  sinners  to  repentance." 

(b.)  This  next  is  an  Epistle  by  Clement,  one  of  the 
early  bishops  of  Rome,  whom  ancient  writers  unhesi- 
tatingly assert  to  be  the  Clement  mentioned  by  St. 
Paul  in  Phil.  iv.  3.  This  letter  is  a  very  valuable  one, 
and  Irenseus,  who  was  bishop  of  Lyons  a  little  later, 
says  of  it,  "It  was  written  by  Clement,  who  had  seen 
the  blessed  apostles  and  conversed  with  them,  who 
had  the  preaching  of  the  blessed  apostles  still  sound- 
ing in  his  ears  and  their  tradition  before  his  eyes." 
The  epistle  was  addressed  to  the  Church  of  Corinth, 
and  Dionysius,  bishop  of  Corinth  about  170  A.  D.,  bears 
witness  "that  it  had  been  wont  to  be  read  in  his 
church  from  ancient  times."  Here  are  a  few  expres- 
sions found  in  it:  "Remembering  the  words  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  which  He  spake,  teaching  us  gentleness  and 
long-suffering;  for  He  said,  'Be  merciful,  that  ye  may 
pbtain  mercy;  forgive,  that  it  maybe  forgiven  unto 


ANCIENT  VERSIONS  AND  QUOTATIONS.  43 

you;  as  ye  give  it  shall  be  given  unto  you;  as  ye  judge 
ye  shall  be  judged;  with  what  measure  ye  mete,  it 
shall  be  measured  to  you.' ' 

And  again,  "Remember  the  words  of  the  Lord 
Jesus,  how  He  said,  '  Woe  to  the  man  by  whom  of- 
fences come;  it  were  better  for  him  that  he  had  not 
been  born  than  that  he  should  offend  one  of  My  elect. 
It  were  better  for  him  that  a  millstone  should  be  tied 
about  his  neck,  and  that  he  should  be  drowned  in  the 
depths  of  the  sea,  than  that  he  should  offend  one  of 
My  little  ones.'" 

(£.)  Of  about  the  same  date  is  this  book,  the  Shep- 
herd of  Hermas,  by  some  conjectured  to  be  the  Hermas 
of  Rom.  xvi.  14.  Here  we  have  reference  to  the  con- 
fessing and  denying  of  Christ,  the  parable  of  the  seed 
sown,  the  expression,  "He  that  putteth  away  his  wife 
and  marrieth  another,  committeth  adultery,"  &c.,  &c. 

(d.)  St.  Ignatius  became  bishop  of  Antioch  about 
forty  years  after  the  Ascension.  Here  are  a  few  quo- 
tations from  him:  "Christ  was  baptized  of  John,  that 
all  righteousness  might  be  fulfilled  in  Him."  "  Be  ye 
wise  as  serpents  in  all  things,  and  harmless  as  a  dove.'' 
"The  Spirit  is  from  God,  for  it  knows  whence  it 
cometh  and  whither  it  goeth." 

(e.)  The  martyr  Polycarp  was  a  disciple  of  St.  John, 
and  is  thus  spoken  of  by  Irenaeus,  bishop  of  Lyons, 
who  in  his  youth  had  seen  him:  " I  can  tell  the  place 
in  which  the  blessed  Polycarp  sat  and  taught,  and  his 


44  HOW   WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

going  out  and  coming  in,  and  the  manner  of  his  life, 
and  how  he  related  his  conversations  with  John  and 
others  who  had  seen  the  Lord,  all  which  Polycarp  re- 
lated agreeably  to  the  Scriptures."  Of  this  old  martyr 
we  have  an  epistle  remaining,  and  though  it  is  a  very 
short  one,  it  contains  nearly  forty  clear  allusions  to  the 
New  Testament  books,  some  of  which  are  valuable 
for  critical  purposes. 

(/.)  Those  old  parchments  lying  beside  Polycarp's 
Epistle,  are  the  "Apologies,"  by  Justin  Martyr,  and 
his  "Dialogue  with  Trypho,"  written  about  the  year 
1 50.  They  contain  very  interesting  quotations,  though 
unfortunately  they  seem  often  quoted  from  memory, 
and  therefore  lose  much  of  their  value.  This  is  only 
what  we  might  expect.  "  When  we  think  it  strange," 
says  Dr.  Salmon  in  a  recent  book,1  "that  an  ancient 
father  of  Justin's  date  should  not  quote  with  perfect 
accuracy,  we  forget  that  in  those  days,  when  manu- 
scripts were  scarce  and  concordances  did  not  exist, 
the  process  of  finding  a  passage  in  a  manuscript  (writ- 
ten possibly  with  no  spaces  between  the  words)  was 
not  performed  with  quite  as  much  ease  as  an  English 
clergyman  writing  his  sermon,  with  a  Bible  and  Con- 
cordance by  his  side,  can  turn  up  any  text  he  wishes 
to  refer  to,  and  yet  we  should  be  sorry  to  vouch  for 
the  verbal  accuracy  of  all  the  Scripture  citations  we 
hear  in  sermons  at  the  present  day." 

i "  Introd.  New  Testament,"  p.  82, 


ANCIENT  VERSIONS  AND  QUOTATIONS.  45 

The  following  are  a  few  of  Justin's  quotations:  "I 
gave  you  power  to  tread  on  serpents  and  scorpions, 
and  venomous  beasts,  and  on  all  the  power  of  the 
enemy."  "Give  to  him  that  asketh,  and  from  him 
that  would  borrow  turn  not  away ;  for  if  ye  lend  to 
them  of  whom  ye  hope  to  receive,  what  new  thing  do 
ye?  Even  the  publicans  do  this.  Lay  not  up  for 
yourselves  treasures  upon  earth,  where  moth  and  rust 
doth  corrupt,  and  where  robbers  break  through;  but 
lay  up  for  yourselves  treasure  in  heaven,  where  neither 
moth  nor  rust  doth  corrupt."  "For  what  is  a  man 
profited  if  he  shall  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his 
own  soul,  or  what  shall  a  man  give  in  exchange  for 
it?"  And  again,  "Be  ye  kind  and  merciful,  as  your 
Father  also  is  kind  and  merciful,  and  maketh  His  sun 
to  rise  on  sinners,  and  the  righteous  and  the  wicked. 
Take  no  thought  what  ye  shall  eat  or  what  ye  shall  put 
on;  are  ye  not  better  than  the  birds  and  the  beasts? 
and  God  feedeth  them.  Take  no  thought,  therefore, 
what  ye  shall  eat  or  what  ye  shall  put  on,  for  your 
heavenly  Father  knoweth  that  ye  have  need  of  these 
things.  But  seek  ye  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and  all 
these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you.  For  where  his 
treasure  is,  there  is  the  mind  of  man." 

On  account  of  the  double  object  in  view,  I  have  se- 
lected only  writers  of  the  second  century  to  illustrate 
the  use  of  the  "  Quotations."  More  important  for  pur- 
poses of  criticism,  though  later  in  date,  are  those  thick 


46  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

manuscripts  further  on,  the  works  of  Origen  and 
Clement  of  Alexandria  early  in  the  third  century,  and 
in  the  fourth  Basil,  and  Augustine,  and  Jerome  the 
great  reviser,  and  many  others,  whose  writings  in 
large  quantity  are  available  for  criticism  of  the  Bible. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS. 

§  I.  The  Bible  Poet.  §  2.  Eadhelm  and  Egbert.  §  3.  The  Monk 
of  Yarrow.  §  4.  A  Royal  Translator.  §  5.  Curious  Expres- 
sions. 

THUS  we  have  seen  the  form  in  which  the  Scriptures 
existed  in  the  age  soon  after  that  of  the  apostles,  and 
found  the  threefold  line  of  evidence  available  at  the 
present  day  for  the  purpose  of  Bible  Revision — (i.) 
Greek  and  Hebrew  manuscripts;  (2.)  Ancient  Versions; 
and  (3.)  Quotations  from  the  then  existing  Scriptures 
in  the  works  of  early  Christian  writers. 

And  now  that  we  are  to  trace  the  connection  of 
these  with  our  present  English  Bible,  it  becomes  neces- 
sary for  our  purpose  to  ask,  with  the  triple  pile  of 
parchments  before  us,  how  much  of  this  material  was 
accessible  a  thousand  years  ago,  when  the  history  of 
our  English  Bible  begins.  For  it  is  evident  that  the 
value  of  a  Scripture  version  at  any  period  depends  on 
the  value  of  the  old  manuscript  material  accessible, 
and  the  ability  of  the  men  of  that  day  to  use  it. 

For  answer  we  take  from  the  centre  pile  those  few 
faded  worn-looking  copies,  portions  of  the  Vulgate 

and  older  Latin  versions,  and  place  them  on  the  one 

47 


48  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

side. l  Those  are  the  Scriptures  which  have  come 
down  to  us  from  the  monasteries  of  ancient  England, 
and  as  we  compare  side  by  side  this  handful  of  old 
parchments  with  the  great  mass  of  writings  from 
which  it  has  been  drawn,  we  are  comparing  together 
the  sources  of  the  earliest  and  latest  English  Versions 
— of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Scriptures  of  a  thousand  years 
since,  and  the  Revised  Bible  which  is  in  our  hands  to- 
day. 2  The  growth  of  the  English  Bible,  which  took 
place  in  the  meantime,  we  are  now  briefly  to  trace.  * 

1  There  were  also  many  works  of  the  early  Christian  Fathers,  but 
as  no  one  then  thought  of  using  them  for  purposes  of  textual  criticism, 
we  need  not  take  them  into  account. 

*  On  page  facing  the  title  I  have  tried  to  show  by  a  diagram  the 
gradual  increase  in  the  sources  of  our  English  Bible. 

8  Here  comes  a  temptation  to  an  Irish  writer.  Is  he  bound  to  start 
from  the  seventh  century,  when  the  earliest  known  translations  from 
these  manuscripts  were  made  ?  May  he  not  go  back  a  little  further, 
and  let  rise  the  historic  memories  called  up  by  those  manuscripts 
themselves  ?  May  he  not  indulge  a  little  in  the  "  Irish  pride  of  better 
days"  (the  only  source  of  pride  to  poor  Ireland  in  the  present),  and 
picture  the  noble  libraries  of  Durrovv  and  Armagh,  to  which  England 
probably  owes  her  earliest  Scriptures — when  St.  Columb  carried  his 

1  manuscripts  to  lonely  lona  in  the  days  of  the  glory  of  the  Irish 
Church,  when  Ireland  was  the  light  of  the  Western  World,  and  Irish- 
men went  forth  from  the  "  Island  of  Saints  "  to  evangelize  the  heathen 
English  ? 

At  any  rate  it  seems  worth  spending  a  few  sentences  to  point  out 
that  not  from  Rome,  but  from  the  ancient  Irish  Church,  did  England 
chiefly  derive  her  Christianity,  and  probably  her  earliest  Scriptures. 
What  seems  best  remembered  in  connection  with  the  question,  is  the 
famous  scene  of  Gregory  in  the  slave-market  at  Rome,  admiring  the 
beautiful  English  children — "not  Angles,  but  angels,"  said  he,  "  if 
they  were  only  Christians" — and  the  consequent  sending  of  the 
Abbot  Augustine  to  England  with  a  band  of  Christian  missionaries. 
It  needs  to  be  pointed  out  that,  according  to  our  best  historians,  this 
Roman  mission  soon  lost  its  early  ardor,  penetrating  little  further 
than  Kent,  where  it  originally  landed,  and  that  the  conversion  of  Eng- 
land, which  had  become  completely  pagan  under  Saxon  rule,  was  for 
the  most  part  left  to  the  missionaries  of  the  Irish  Church.  From  St. 


EARLY  ENGLISH   VERSIONS.  49 

§  i.  Though  England  had  no  complete  Bible  before 
Wycliffe's  days,  attempts  were  made  from  very  early 
times  to  present  the  Scriptures  in  the  language  of  the 
people,  and  the  story  of  these  ancient  translations 
from  the  Latin  manuscripts  before  us,  forms  certainly 
one  of  the  most  interesting  though  not  most  important 
portions  of  the  history  of  the  English  Bible. 

It  is  now  1200  years  since,  on  a  winter  night,  a  poor 
Saxon  cowherd  lay  asleep  in  a  stable  of  the  famous 
Abbey  of  Whitby.  Grieved  and  dispirited,  he  had* 
come  in  from  the  feast  where  his  masters,  and  some 
even  of  his  companions,  during  the  amusements  of 
the  night,  had  engaged  in  the  easy,  alliterative  rhym- 
ing of  those  simple  early  days.  But  Caedmon  could 
make  no  song, l  and  his  soul  was  very  sad.  Suddenly, 
as  he  lay,  it  seemed  to  him  that  a  heavenly  glory 
lighted  up  his  stable,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  glory 

Columb's  monastery  at  lona  the  Irish  preachers  came,  and  travelled 
over  the  greater  part  of  the  country.  Aidan,  their  leader,  went 
through  the  wilds  of  Yorkshire  and  Northumbria,  with  King  Oswald 
as  his  interpreter,  a  former  student  of  lona — while  Chad  and  Boisil 
led  their  little  bands  of  missionaries  through  the  centre  of  the  heathen 
land,  returning  at  stated  periods  to  Lindisfarne,  where  Aidan  had 
fixed  his  episcopal  see.  And  not  England  only  owes  a  debt  to  the 
Irish  Church.  As  far  off  as  the  Apennines  and  the  Alps  the  traces  of 
her  enthusiastic  missionaries  are  found,  and  "  for  a  time  it  seemed  as 
if  the  course  of  the  world's  history  was  to  be  changed,  as  if  the  older 
Celtic  race,  that  Roman  and  German  had  swept  before  them,  had 
turned  to  the  moral  conquest  of  their  conquerors,  as  if  Celtic  and  not 
Latin  Christianity  was  to  mould  the  destinies  of  the  churches  of  the 
West." 

1  Being  at  the  feast,  when  all  agreed  for  glee  sake  to  sing  in  turn, 
he  no  sooner  saw  the  harp  come  toward  him,  than  he  rose  from  the 
board  and  returned  homeward." — Account  of  Caedmon  in  Bedels  Eccl. 
Hist. 


50  HOW   WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

One  appeared  who  had  been  cradled  in  a  manger  six 
hundred  years  before. 

"Sing,  Csedmon,"  He  said,  "sing  some  song  to 
me." 

"  I  cannot  sing,"  was  the  sorrowful  reply,  "  for  this 
cause  it  is  that  I  came  hither." 

"Yet,"  said  He  who  stood  before  him,  "yet  shalt 
thou  sing  to  me." 

"What  shall  I  sing?" 

"The  beginning  of  created  things." 

And  as  he  listened,  a  divine  power  seemed  to  come 
on  him,  and  words  that  he  had  never  heard  before 
rose  up  before  his  mind. l  And  so  the  vision  passed 
away.  But  the  power  remained  with  Caedmon,  and 
in  the  morning  the  Saxon  cowherd  went  forth  from 
the  cattle-stalls  transformed  into  a  mighty  poet! 

Hilda  the  abbess  heard  the  wondrous  tale,  and  from 
one  of  those  Latin  manuscripts  she  translated  to  him  a 
story  of  the  Scriptures.  Next  day  it  was  reproduced 
in  a  beautiful  poem,  followed  by  another  and  another 
as  the  spirit  of  the  poet  grew  powerful  within  him. 
Entranced,  the  abbess  and  the  brethren  heard,  and 

» The  words  that  came  to  the  sleeper's  mind  are  recorded  by  King 
Alfred.  They  begin : 

"  Now  must  we  praise 
the  grandeur  of  Heaven's  kingdom ; 
the  Creator's  might, 
and  his  mind's  thought ; 
glorious  father  of  men, 
The  Lord  the  Eternal, 
who  formed  the  beginning,"  &c.,  &c. 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS.  51 

they  acknowledged  the  "  grace  that  had  been  conferred 
on  him  by  the  Lord."  They  bade  him  lay  aside  his 
secular  habit  and  enter  the  monastic  life,  and  from 
that  day  forward  the  Whitby  cowherd  devoted  him- 
self with  enthusiasm  to  the  task  that  had  been  set  him 
in  the  vision.  "Others  after  him  strove  to  compose 
religious  poems,  but  none  could  vie  with  him,  for  he 
learned  not  the  art  of  poetry  from  men,  neither  of 
men,  but  of  God."  In  earnest  passionate  words, 
which  yet  remain,  he  sung  for  the  simple  people  "of 
the  creation  of  the  world,  of  the  origin  of  man,  and  of 
all  the  history  of  Israel ;  of  the  Incarnation,  and  Pas- 
sion, and  Resurrection  of  Christ,  and  His  Ascension; 
of  the  terror  of  future  judgment,  the  horror  of  hell 
pains,  and  the  joys  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven." l 

Though  his  work  has  of  course  no  right  to  rank 
among  Bible  translations,  being  merely  an  attempt  to 
sing  for  the  ignorant  people  the  substance  of  the  in- 
spired story,  yet  we  venture  to  give  a  brief  extract, 
translated  into  modern  English,  telling  of  the  appear- 
ance of  Christ  to  His  disciples  after  the  resurrection: 

"  What  time  the  Lord  God 
from  death  arose 
so  strongly  was  no 
Satan  armed 

'Some  account  of  Csedmon  from  Bede's  Eccl.  Hist,  translated 
into  Anglo-Saxon  by  King  Alfred." — Published  by  the  Society  of  Anti- 
quaries, London. 


HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

though  he  were  with  iron 

all  girt  round 

that  might  that  great 

force  resist; 

for  he  went  forth, 

the  Lord  of  angels, 

in  the  strong  city, 

and  bade  fetch 

angels  all  bright 

and  even  bade  say 

to  Simon  Peter 

that  he  might  on  Galilee 

behold  God 

eternal  and  firm, 

as  he  ere  did. 

Then  as  I  understand,  went 

the  disciples  together 

all  to  Galilee, 

inspired  by  the  Spirit, 

The  holy  Son  of  God, 

whom  they  saw 

were  the  Lord's  son. 

Then  over  against  the  disciples  stood 

the  Lord  Eternal, 

God  in  Galilee, 

so  that  the  disciples 

thither  all  ran 

Where  the  eternal  was, 

fell  on  the  earth, 

and  at  his  feet  bowed, 

thanking  the  Lord 

that  thus  it  befell 

that  they  should  behold 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS.  63 

the  creator  of  angels. 

Then  forthwith  spake 

Simon  Peter  and  said, 

Art  thou  thus,  Lord, 

with  power  gifted  ? 

We  saw  thee 

at  one  time  when 

they  laid  thee 

in  loathsome  bondage, 

the  heathen  with  their  hands. 

That  they  may  rue 

when  they  their  end 

shall  behold  hereafter. 


He  on  the  tree  ascended 

and  shed  his  blood, 

God  on  the  cross 

through  his  Spirit's  power. 

Wherefore  we  should 

at  all  times 

give  to  the  Lord  thanks 

in  deeds  and  works 

for  that  he  us  from  thraldom 

led  home 

up  to  Heaven, 

where  we  may  share 

the  greatness  of  God."1 

§  2.     About  the  time  of  Csedmon's  death,  early  in 
the  eighth  century,  the  learned  Eadhelm,  bishop  of 

1  Thorpe's  "  Caedmon's  Paraphrase." — Society  of  Antiquaries,  Lon- 
don, 1832. 


54  HOW   WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

Sherborne,  was  working  in  Glastonbury  Abbey  trans- 
lating the  Psalms  of  David  into  Anglo-Saxon,  and 
at  his  request,  it  is  said,  Egbert,  bishop  of  Holy 
Island,  completed  about  the  same  time  a  version  of 
the  Gospels,  of  which  a  copy  is  still  preserved  in  the 
British  Museum. 

§  3.  But  the  names  of  Eadhelm  and  Egbert  are 
overshadowed  by  that  of  a  contemporary  far  greater 
than  either. 

It  was  a  calm  peaceful  evening  in  the  spring  of 
735 — the  evening  of  Ascension  Day — and  in  his  quiet 
cell  in  the  monastery  of  Jarrow  an  aged  monk  lay 
dying.  With  labored  utterance  he  tried  to  dictate 
to  his  scribe,  while  a  group  of  fair-haired  Saxon  youths 
stood  sorrowfully  by,  with  tears  beseeching  their  "  dear 
master"  to  rest. 

That  dying  monk  was  the  most  famous  scholar  of 
his  day  in  Western  Europe.  Through  him  Jarrow- 
on-the-Tyne  had  become  the  great  centre  of  literature 
and  science,  hundreds  of  eager  students  crowding 
yearly  to  its  halls  to  learn  of  the  famous  Baeda.  He 
was  deeply  versed  in  the  literature  of  Greece  and 
Rome — he  had  written  on  medicine,  and  astronomy, 
and  rhetoric,  and  most  of  the  other  known  sciences  of 
the  time — his  "Ecclesiastical  History"  is  still  the 
chief  source  of  our  knowledge  of  ancient  England; — 
but  none  of  his  studies  were  to  him  equal  to  the 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS.  65 

study  of  religion,  none  of  his  books  of  the  same  im- 
portance as  his  commentaries  and  sermons  on  Scrip- 
ture. Even  then  as  he  lay  on  his  deathbed  he  was 
feebly  dictating  to  his  scribe  a  translation  of  St.  John's 
Gospel.  "I  don't  want  my  boys  to  read  a  lie,"  he 
said,  "or  to  work  to  no  purpose  after  I  am  gone." 

And  those  "boys"  seem  to  have  dearly  loved  the 
gentle  old  man.  An  epistle  has  come  down  to  us 
from  his  disciple  Cuthbert  to  a  "fellow  reader"  Cuth- 
win,  telling  of  what  had  happened  this  Ascension  Day. 
"Our  father  and  master,  whom  God  loved,"  he  says, 
"had  translated  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  as  far  as 
'what  are  these  among  so  many,'  when  the  day  came 
before  Our  Lord's  Ascension. 

"He  began  then  to  suffer  much  in  his  breath,  and 
a  swelling  came  in  his  feet,  but  he  went  on  dictating 
to  his  scribe.  'Go  on  quickly,'  he  said,  'I  know  not 
how  long  I  shall  hold  out,  or  how  soon  my  Master  will 
call  me  hence.' 

"All  night  long  he  lay  awake  in  thanksgiving,  and 
when  the  Ascension  Day  dawned,  he  commanded  us 
to  write  with  all  speed  what  he  had  begun." 

Thus  the  letter  goes  on  affectionately,  describing 
the  working  and  resting  right  through  the  day  till  the 
evening  came,  and  then,  with  the  setting  sun  gilding 
the  windows  of  his  cell,  the  old  man  lay  feebly  dictat- 
ing the  closing  words. 

"There  remains  but  one  chapter,  master,"  said  the 


56  SOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

anxious  scribe,  "but  it  seems  very  hard  for  you  to 
speak." 

"Nay,  it  is  easy,"  Bede  replied;  "take  up  thy  pen 
and  write  quickly." 

Amid  blinding  tears  the  young  scribe  wrote  on. 
"And  now,  father,"  said  he,  as  he  eagerly  caught  the 
last  words  from  his  quivering  lips,  "only  one  sentence 
remains."  Bede  dictated  it. 

"It  is  finished,  master!"  cried  the  youth,  raising 
his  head  as  the  last  word  was  written. 

"Ay,  it  is  finished!"  echoed  the  dying  saint;  "lift 
me  up,  place  me  at  that  window  of  my  cell  where  I 
have  so  often  prayed  to  God.  Now  glory  be  to  the 
Father,  and  to  the  Son,  and  to  the  Holy  Ghost!"  and 
with  these  words  the  beautiful  spirit  passed  to  the 
presence  of  the  Eternal  Trinity. 

§  4.  Our  next  translator  is  no  less  a  person  than 
King  Alfred  the  Great,  whose  patriotic  wish  has  been 
so  often  quoted,  "that  all  the  freeborn  youth  of  his 
kingdom  should  employ  themselves  on  nothing  till  they 
could  first  read  well  the  English  Scripture."1 

A  striking  monument  of  his  zeal  for  the  Bible  re- 
mains in  the  beginning  of  his  Laws  of  England.  The 
document  is  headed  "  Alfred's  Dooms,"  and  begins 

1  At  least  so  it  is  quoted,  though  the  last  words  "  Kn^lisc  ge-writ 
anedan  "  quite  as  probably  mean  "  to  read  English  writing."  See 
Eadie's  Bibl.  Hist.,  i.  13. 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS. 


67 


thus:  "  The  dooms  which  the  Almighty  Himself  spake 
to  Moses,  and  gave  him  to  keep,  and  after  our  Saviour 
Christ  came  to  earth,  He  said  He  came  not  to  break  or 
forbid,  but  to  keep  them."  And  then  follow  the  Ten 
Commandments,  in  the  forcible  simple  Anglo-Saxon 
terms,  the  first  part  of  the  ancient  laws  of  England: 


Drihten  woes  sprecende  thaes 
word  to  Moyse  and  thus  cwaeth : 

Ic  earn  Drihten  thy  God.  Ic  the 
sit  gebedde  of  Aegypta  londe  and 
of  heora  theowdome. 

Ne  lufa  thu  othre  fremde 
godas  ofer  me. 

***** 

Ara  thinum  fseder  and  thinre 
meder  tha  the  Drihten  sealde  the, 
that  thu  sy  thy  leng  libbende  on 
eorthan. 

Ne  slea  thu. 

Ne  stala  thu. 

Ne  lige  thu  dearnunga. 

Ne  ssege  thu  lease  gewitnesse 
with  thinum  nehstan. 

Ne  wilna  thu  thines  nehstan 
yifes  mid  unrihte. 

Ne  wyrc  thu  the  gyldene  godas 
ohthe  seolfrene. 


Lord  was  speaking  these  words 
to  Moses  and  thus  said  : 

I  am  the  Lord  thy  God.  I  led 
thee  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt  and 
its  thralldom. 

Love  thou  not  other  strange 
gods  over  me. 

***** 

Honor  thy  father  and  thy 
mother  whom  the  Lord  gave  thee, 
that  thou  be  long  living  on  earth. 

Slay  not  thou. 

Steal  not  thou. 

Commit  not  thou  adultery. 

Say  not  thou  false  witness 
against  thy  neighbor. 

Desire  not  thou  thy  neighbor's 
inheritance  with  unright. 

Work  not  thou  the  golden  gods 
or  silvern. 


Here  is  the  Lord's  Prayer  of  King  Alfred's  time,  and 


58 


HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 


side  by  side  with  it  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  early  English 
three  hundred  years  afterward: 


Uren  Fader  dhis  art  in  heofnas, 

Sic  gehalged  dhin  noma, 

To  cymedh  dhin  ric, 

Sic  dhin  uuilla  sue  is  in  heofnas 
and  in  eardho, 

Vren  hlaf  ofer  uuirthe  sel  vs 
to  daeg, 

And  forgef  us  scylda  urna, 

Sue  uue  forgefan  sculdgun 
vrum, 

And  no  inleadh  vridk  in  cost- 
nung  al  gefrig  vrich  from  ifle. 


Fader  oure  that  art  in  heve, 

I-halgeed  be  thi  nome, 

I-cume  thi  kinereiche, 

Y-worthe  thi  wylle  also  is  in 
hevene  so  be  on  erthe, 

Our  iche-days-bred  gif  us  to- 
day, 

Andforgifus  oure  gultes. 

Also  we  forgifet  oure  guitar et 

Andne  led  ows  nowth  into  f on- 
dyngge,  Auth  ales  ows  of  harme, 
So  be  hit. 


Alfred  also  engaged  in  a  translation  of  the  Psalms, 
which,  with  the  Gospels,  seemed  the  favorite  Scrip- 
tures of  the  people;  but,  unlike  his  great  predecessor, 
Bede,  he  died  before  his  task  was  finished. 

§  5.  Archbishop  /Elfric,  and  a  few  other  translat- 
ors, appear  about  the  close  of  the  tenth  century,  but 
there  is  no  need  of  describing  their  works  in  detail. 
As  far  as  we  can  judge  from  the  existing  manuscripts, 
most  of  these  early  Bible  translations  were  intended 
for  reading  in  the  churches  to  the  people,  and  their 
simple  expressive  terms  made  them  very  easily  under- 
stood. For  example,  a  centurion  was  a  "hundred- 


^  •>  v-  •*  "S"^ 

ifMfi 


EARLY  ENGLISH  VERSIONS.  5!) 

man,"  a  disciple  a  "looming  cnight,"  or  "learning 
youth;  "  "the  man  with  the  dropsy,"  is  translated  as 
"the  water-seoc-man,"  the  Sabbath  as  "the  reste 
daeg"  (rest  day),  and  the  woman  who  put  her  mites 
in  the  treasury,  is  said  to  have  cast  them  into  the 
"gold-hoard."  l 

On  the  opposite  page  is  a  photograph  of  Arch- 
bishop /Elfric's  Anglo-Saxon  Bible.  It  is  taken  from 
a  beautiful  copy  in  the  Cottonian  Library.  It  contains 
many  curious  miniatures  as  for  example  the  Creation  of 
Eve  who  is  represented  as  being  drawn  out  of  an  open- 
ing amongst  Adam's  ribs.  The  miniature  which  we 
reproduce  represents  the  expulsion  of  Adam  and  Eve 
from  Paradise  and  their  being  taught  by  an  angel  to  till 
the  ground.  Below  it  is  photographed  a  verse  from 
a  later  page  (Gen.  iv.  9,  10).  It  is  interesting  to  notice 
in  this  passage  that  almost  every  word  of  its  Anglo- 
Saxon  is  still  represented  in  our  present  English: 

Tha    cwaeth     Drihten    to   Caine    hwaer    is  Abel 
Then   quoth        the  Lord   to    Cain       where      is     Abel 

thin  brothor:  tha  andswarode  he  &  cwseth 
thy  brother:  then  answered  he  6^  quoth 

is  nat  segst  thu  sceolde  is  minne  brothor  &c. 
J  know  not,  sayest  thou  should  I  my  brother  &c. 

i  See  Forshall  and  Madden's  Anglo-Saxon  Gospels. 


60  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

The  following  is  a  New  Testament  specimen  from 
Forshall  and  Madden's  Anglo-Saxon  Gospels. 

ST.  MATT.  vii.  26,  27. 

And  aelc    thaera   the    gehyrath    thas    mine    word 
And   each   of  them  that  ge-heareth   these    mine    words 

and    tha    ne    wyrcth  se    bith    gelic    tham 

and    that    not    worketh  (them)     he    beeth    ge-like     that 

dysigan  man    tha    getimbrode    hys    hus    ofer 

foolish  (dizzy)  man     that        timbered       his     house  over 

sand-ceosel.    Tha  rinde  hyt  and  thaer  comun  flod 
sand  gravel.       Then  rained  it     and    there     come    food 

and  bleowun  windas  and  ahruron  on  that  hus,  and 
and      blew        winds       and    rushed    on  that  house,  and 

that  hus  feoll  and  hys  hryre  waes  mycel. 
that  house  fell    and  his    fall     was   mickle. 


CHAPTER  V. 

WYCLIFFE'S  VERSION. 

§  i.  Growth  of  the  Language.  §  2.  The  Parish  Priest  of  Lutter^ 
worth.  §  3.  His  Death.  §  4.  The  Wycliffe  Version.  §  5. 
Results  of  his  Work. 

§  i.  AFTER  the  early  Anglo-Saxon  versions  comes  a 
long  pause  in  the  history  of  Bible  translation.  Amid 
the  disturbance  resulting  from  the  Danish  invasion 
there  was  little  time  for  thinking  of  translations  and 
manuscripts;  and  before  the  land  had  fully  regained 
its  quiet  the  fatal  battle  of  Hastings  had  been  fought, 
and  England  lay  helpless  at  the  feet  of  the  Normans. 
The  higher  Saxon  clergy  were  replaced  by  the  priests 
of  Normandy,  who  had  little  sympathy  with  the  people 
over  whom  they  were  placed,  and  the  Saxon  manu- 
scripts were  contemptuously  flung  aside  as  relics  of  a 
rude  barbarism.  The  contempt  shown  to  the  language 
of  the  defeated  race  quite  destroyed  the  impulse  to  Eng- 
lish translation,  and  the  Norman  clergy  had  no  sym- 
pathy with  the  desire  for  spreading  the  knowledge  of 
the  Scriptures  among  the  people,  so  that  for  centuries 

61 


62  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

those  Scriptures  remained  in  England  a  "spring  shut 
up,  a  fountain  sealed." 

Yet  this  time  must  not  be  considered  altogether  lost, 
for  during  those  centuries  England  was  becoming  fit- 
ted for  an  English  Bible.  The  future  language  of  the 
nation  was  being  formed;  the  Saxon  and  Norman 
French  were  struggling  side  by  side;  gradually  the 
old  Saxon  grew  unintelligible  to  the  people;  gradually 
the  French  became  a  foreign  tongue,  and  with  the 
fusion  of  the  two  races  a  language  grew  up  which 
was  the  language  of  united  England.  * 

§  2.  Passing,  then,  from  the  quiet  deathbeds  of 
Alfred  and  Bede,  we  transfer  ourselves  to  the  great 

1  "  In  tracing  the  history  of  the  change  from  Anglo-Saxon  to  mo- 
dern English  it  is  impossible  to  assign  any  precise  dates  by  which  we 
can  mark  the  origin  of  this  change,  or  the  principal  epochs  of  its  prog- 
ress, or  its  completion.  This  necessarily  results  from  the  very 
gradual  nature  of  the  change  itself;  we  might  as  well  ask  at  what 
moment  a  child  becomes  a  youth,  or  a  youth  a  man ;  or  when  the 
plant  becomes  a  tree.  So  gradual  was  the  change,  that,  to  adopt  the 
language  of  Hallam,  '  When  we  compare  the  earliest  English  of  the 
thirteenth  century  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  twelfth,  it  seems  hard 
to  pronounce  why  it  should  pass  for  a  separate  language  rather  than  a 
modification  and  simplification  of  the  former.'  Still,  for  the  sake  of 
convenience,  we  may  fix  on  certain  dates  somewhere  about  which  the 
change  commenced  or  was  effected.  About  uco,  or  a  little  less  than 
a  century  after  the  Conquest,  may  be  dated  the  decline  of  pure  Saxon; 
about  1250,  or  a  century  later,  the  commencement  of  English.  Dur- 
ing the  intervening  century  the  language  has  been  called  by  many  of 
our  writers  semi-Saxon." — //.  Rogers  in  Edinburgh  Review,  Oct. 
'8jo. 

It  was  toward  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  that  English  began 
to  be  the  language  of  literature.  "  Sir  John  Mandeville's  Travels," 
one  of  the  earliest  English  books,  appeared  in  13^6,  and  Chaucer 
wrote  toward  the  close  of  the  century ;  therefore  WyclirTe's  Bible  in 
1383  was  about  as  early  as  a  version  could  be  which  was  to  retain  its 
place  among  the  English  people. 


WYCLIFFE'S    VERSION.  63 

hall  of  the  Blackfriars'  Monastery,  London,  on  a  dull, 
warm  May  day  in  1378,  amid  purple  robes  and  gowns 
of  satin  and  damask,  amid  monks  and  abbots,  and 
bishops  and  doctors  of  the  Church,  assembled  for  the 
trial  of  John  WyclifTe,  the  parish  priest  of  Lutter- 
worth. 

The  great  hall,  crowded  to  its  heavy  oaken  doors, 
witnesses  to  the  interest  that  is  centred  in  the  trial,  and 
all  eyes  are  fixed  on  the  pale  stern  old  man  who  stands 
before  the  dais  silently  facing  his  judges.  He  is  quite 
alone,  and  his  thoughts  go  back,  with  some  bitterness, 
to  his  previous  trial,  when  the  people  crowded  the 
doors  shouting  for  their  favorite,  and  John  of  Gaunt 
and  the  Lord  Marshal  of  England  were  standing  by  his 
side.  He  has  learned  since  then  not  to  put  his  trust  in 
princes.  The  power  of  his  enemies  has  grown  rapidly, 
even  the  young  King  has  been  won  over  to  their 
cause,  and  patrons  and  friends  have  drawn  back 
from  the  side  of  him  whom  the  Church  has  resolved  to 
crush. 

The  judges  have  taken  their  seats,  and  the  accused 
stands  awaiting  the  charges  to  be  read,  when  suddenly 
there  is  a  quick  cry  of  terror.  A  strange  rumbling 
sound  fills  the  air,  and  the  walls  of  the  judgment-hall 
are  trembling  to  their  base — the  monastery  and  the 
city  of  London  are  being  shaken  by  an  earthquake! 
Friar  and  prelate  grow  pale  with  superstitious  awe. 
Twice  already  has  the  arraignment  of  WyclifTe  been 


64  HOW   WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

strangely  interrupted.  Are  the  elements  in  league 
with  this  enemy  of  the  Church  ?  Shall  they  give  up 
the  trial  ? 

"No!"  thunders  Archbishop  Courtenay,  rising  in 
his  place,  "we  will  not  give  up  the  trial.  This 
earthquake  but  portends  the  purging  of  the  king- 
dom; for  as  there  are  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth 
noxious  vapors  which  only  by  a  violent  earthquake 
can  be  purged  away,  so  are  there  evils  brought 
by  such  men  upon  this  land  which  only  by  a  very 
earthquake  can  ever  be  removed.  Let  the  trial  go 
forward ! " 

What  think  you,  reader,  were  the  evils  which  this 
pale  ascetic  had  wrought,  needing  a  very  earthquake 
to  cleanse  them  from  the  land  ?  Had  he  falsified  the 
Divine  Message  to  the  people  in  his  charge  ?  Was  he 
turning  men's  hearts  from  the  worship  of  God  ?  Was 
his  priestly  office  disgraced  by  carelessness  or  drunk- 
enness or  impurity  of  life  ? 

Oh  no!  Such  faults  could  be  gently  judged  at  the 
tribunal  in  the  Blackfriars'  Hall.  Wycliffe's  was  a  far 
more  serious  crime.  He  had  dared  to  attack  the  cor- 
ruptions of  the  Church,  and  especially  the  enormities 
of  the  begging  friars — he  had  indignantly  denounced 
Pardons  and  Indulgences  and  Masses  for  the  soul  as 
part  of  a  system  of  gigantic  fraud ;  and  worst  of  all,  he 
had  filled  up  the  cup  of  his  iniquity  by  translating  the 
Scriptures  into  the  English  tongue,  "making  it,"  as 


WYCLIFFE'S    VERSION.  65 

one  of  the  chroniclers1  angrily  complains,  "common 
and  more  open  to  laymen  and  to  women  than  it  was 
wont  to  be  to  clerks  well  learned  and  of  good  under- 
standing, so  that  the  pearl  of  the  Gospel  is  trodden 
under  foot  of  swine." 

The  feeling  of  his  opponents  will  be  better  under- 
stood if  we  notice  the  position  of  the  Church  in 
England  at  the  time.  She  had  fallen  into  utter  sub- 
jection to  Rome.  Her  clergy  as  a  class  were  ignorant 
and  corrupt.  Her  people  were  neglected,  except  for 
the  money  to  be  extorted  by  Masses  and  Pardons, 
"as  if,"  to  quote  the  words  of  an  old  writer,  "God 
had  given  His  sheep  not  to  be  pastured  but  to  be 
shaven  and  shorn."  This  state  of  things  had  gone  on 
for  centuries,  and  the  people  like  dumb  driven  cattle 
had  submitted.  But  those  who  could  discern  the 
signs  of  the  times  must -have  seen  now  that  it  could 
not  go  on  much  longer.  The  spread  of  education  was 
rapidly  increasing,  several  new  colleges  having  been 
founded  in  Oxford  during  Wycliffe's  lifetime.  A 
strong  spirit  of  independence,  too,  was  rising  among 
the  people — already  Edward  III.  and  his  Parliament 
had  indignantly  refused  the  Pope's  demand  for  the 
annual  tribute  to  be  sent  to  Rome.  It  was  evident 
that  a  crisis  was  near.  And,  as  if  to  hasten  the  crisis, 
the  famous  schism  of  the  Papacy  had  placed  two 
Popes  at  the  head  of  the  Church,  and  all  Christendom 

1  Kneighton, 


66  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

was  scandalized  by  the  sight  of  the  rival  "  vicars  of 
Jesus  Christ"  anathematizing  each  other  from  Rome 
and  Avignon,  raising  armies  and  slaughtering  helpless 
women  and  children,  each  for  the  aggrandizement  of 
himself. 

The  minds  of  men  in  England  were  greatly  agitated, 
and  WyclifTe  felt  that  at  such  a  time  the  firmest 
charter  of  the  Church  would  be  the  open  Bible  in  her 
children's  hands;  the  best  exposure  of  the  selfish 
policy  of  her  rulers,  the  exhibiting  to  the  people  the 
beautiful  self-forgetting  life  of  Jesus  Christ  as  recorded 
in  the  Gospels.  "The  Sacred  Scriptures,"  he  said, 
"are  the  property  of  the  people,  and  one  which  no 
one  should  be  allowed  to  wrest  from  them.  .  .  . 
Christ  and  His  apostles  converted  the  world  by 
making  known  the  Scriptures  to  men  in  a  form 
familiar  to  them,  .  .  .  and  I  pray  with  all  my 
heart  that  through  doing  the  things  contained  in  this 
book  we  may  all  together  come  to  the  everlasting 
life."  This  Bible  translation  he  placed  far  the  first  in 
importance  of  all  his  attempts  to  reform  the  English 
Church,  and  he  pursued  his  object  with  a  vigor  and 
against  an  opposition  that  reminds  one  of  the  old 
monk  of  Bethlehem  and  his  Bible  a  thousand  years 
before. 

The  result  of  the  Blackfriars'  Synod  was,  that  after 
three  days'  deliberation  Wycliffe's  teaching  was  con- 
demned, and  at  a  subsequent  meeting  he  himself  was 


• 


WYCLIFFE'S    VERSION.  67 

excommunicated.  He  returned  to  his  quiet  parsonage 
at  Lutterworth — for  his  enemies  dared  not  yet  proceed 
to  extremities — and  there,  with  his  pile  of  old  Latin 
manuscripts  and  commentaries,  he  labored  on  at 
the  great  work  of  his  life,  till  the  whole  Bible  was 
translated  into  the  "modir  tonge,"  and  England 
received  for  the  first  time  in  her  history  a  complete 
version  of  the  Scriptures1  in  the  language  of  the 
people. 

§  3.  And  scarce  was  his  task  well  finished  when, 
like  his  great  predecessor  Bede,  the  brave  old  priest 
laid  down  his  life.  He  himself  had  expected  that  a 
violent  death  would  have  finished  his  course.  His 

1  This  honor  has  by  some  been  denied  to  Wycliffe,  chiefly  on  the 
authority  of  Sir  Thomas  More.  "Ye  schall  understande,"  he  says, 
"  that  ye  great  arch  heretike  John  Wycliffe,  whereas  ye  Holy  Bible 
was  long  before  his  dayes  by  vertuous  and  well  lerned  men  translated 
into  ye  Englische  tong  and  by  good  and  godly  people  with  devotion 
and  soberness  well  and  reverently  read,  tooke  upon  him  of  malicious 
purpose  to  translate  it  anew.  In  whiche  translacioun  he  purposely 
corrupted  ye  Holy  Text,  maliciously  planting  therein  such  wordes  as 
might  in  ye  reders'  eres  serve  to  the  profe  of  such  heresies  as  he  was 
aboute  to  sowe.  .  .  .  Myself  haue  seen  and  can  shew  you  Bibles 
fayre  and  olde,  written  in  Englische,  which  have  been  known  and  seen 
by  ye  bischop  of  ye  dyoces  and  left  in  lemen's  hands  and  women's." 

However,  he  gives  us  no  means  of  testing  his  statement,  and  the 
fullest  investigation  gives  no  trace  of  anything  but  separate  fragments 
of  Scripture  before  Wycliffe's  time.  Perhaps  Sir  Thomas  More  had 
seen  some  of  Wycliffe's  own  copies,  and  mistook  them  for  the  work  of 
another  and  earlier  writer,  or  more  probably  the  statement  was  made 
hastily  and  without  proper  foundation.  A  few  partial  translations 
had  been  accomplished  in  the  century  before  Wycliffe  by  Scorham, 
Rolle  of  Hampole,  and  others,  but  they  were  little  known.  Wycliffe's 
great  complaint  is  that  there  is  no  English  translation  of  the  Scrip- 
tures. 


68  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

enemies  were  many  and  powerful;  the  primate,  the 
king,  and  the  Pope  were  against  him,  with  the  friars, 
whom  he  had  so  often  and  so  fiercely  defied ; !  so  that 
his  destruction  seemed  but  a  mere  question  of  time. 
But  while  his  enemies  were  preparing  to  strike,  the 
old  man  "  was  not,  for  God  took  him." 

It  was  the  close  of  the  Old  Year,  the  last  Sunday  of 
1384,  and  his  little  flock  at  Lutterwprth  were  kneeling 
in  hushed  reverence  before  the  altar,  when  suddenly, 
at  the  time  of  the  elevation  of  the  Sacrament,  he  fell 
to  the  ground  in  a  violent  fit  of  the  palsy,  and  never 
spoke  again  until  his  death  on  the  last  day  of  the  year. 

In  him  England  lost  one  of  her  best  and  greatest 
sons,  a  patriot  sternly  resenting  all  dishonor  to  his 
country,  a  reformer  who  ventured  his  life  for  the 
purity  of  the  Church  and  the  freedom  of  the  Bible — 
an  earnest,  faithful  "  parsoun  of  a  toune  "  standing  out 
conspicuously  among  the  clergy  of  the  time, 

"  For  Christy's  lore  and  his  apostles  twelve 
He  taughte — and  first  he  folwede  it  himselve."* 

Here  is  a  choice  specimen  from  one  of  the  monkish 

'  The  scene  has  frequently  been  described  of  the  friars  pressing 
round  what  seemed  the  deathbed  of  their  old  assailant,  adjuring 
him  to  recant  and  receive  their  absolution,  and  the  stern  old  man 
raising  himself  suddenly  to  startle  them  with  his  fierce  prophetic 
cry,  "  I  shall  not  die,  but  live  to  declare  again  the  evil  deeds  of  the 
friars !  " 

•Chaucer's  Prologue,  527.  The  whole  of  that  exquisite  descrip- 
tion of  the  "  parsoun  "  is  supposed  to  refer  to  Wycliffe,  whose  teaching 
the  poet  had  warmly  embraced. 


WYCLIFFE1 8    VERSION.  69 

writers  of  the  time  describing  his  death: — "On  the 
feast  of  the  passion  of  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury,  John 
Wycliffe,  the  organ  of  the  devil,  the  enemy  of  the 
Church,  the  idol  of  heretics,  the  image  of  hypocrites, 
the  restorer  of  schism,  the  storehouse  of  lies,  the  sink 
of  flattery,  being  struck  by  the  horrible  judgment  of 
God,  was  seized  with  the  palsy  throughout  his  whole 
body,  and  that  mouth  which  was  to  have  spoken  huge 
things  against  God  and  His  saints,  and  holy  Church, 
was  miserably  drawn  aside,  and  afforded  a  frightful 
spectacle  to  beholders;  his  tongue  was  speechless  and 
his  head  shook,  showing  plainly  that  the  curse  which 
God  had  thundered  forth  against  Cain  was  also  in- 
flicted on  him."1 

Some  time  after  his  death  a  petition  was  presented 
to  the  Pope,  which  to  his  honor  he  rejected,  praying 
him  to  order  Wycliffe's  body  to  be  taken  out  of  conse- 
crated ground  and  buried  in  a  dunghill.  But  forty 
years  after,  by  a  decree  of  the  Council  of  Constance, 
the  old  Reformer's  bones  were  dug  up  and  burned,  and 
the  ashes  flung  into  the  little  river  Swift,  which  "run- 
neth hard  by  his  church  at  Lutterworth."  And  so,  in 
the  oft-quoted  words  of  old  Fuller,  "as  the  Swift  bare 
them  into  the  Severn,  and  the  Severn  into  the  narrow 
seas,  and  they  again  into  the  ocean,  thus  the  ashes  of 
Wycliffe  is  an  emblem  of  his  doctrine,  which  is  now 
dispersed  over  all  the  world." 

i  Lewis's  «  Life  of  Wycliffe." 


70  HOW  WE  GOT  OVR  BIBLE. 

§  4.  But  it  is  with  his  Bible  translation  that  we  are 
specially  concerned.  As  far  as  we  can  learn,  the  whole 
Bible  was  not  translated  by  the  Reformer.  About  half 
the  Old  Testament  is  ascribed  to  Nicholas  de  Hereford,1 
one  of  the  Oxford  leaders  of  the  Lollards,  the  remain- 
der, with  the  whole  of  the  New  Testament,  being  done 
by  WyclifTe  himself.  About  eight  years  after  its  com- 
pletion the  v/hole  was  revised  by  Richard  Purvey,  his 
curate  and  intimate  friend,  whose  manuscript  is  still  in 
the  library  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  Purvey's  pref- 
ace is  a  most  interesting  old  document,  and  shows  not 
only  that  he  was  deeply  in  earnest  about  his  work,  but 
that  he  thoroughly  understood  the  intellectual  and  moral 
conditions  necessary  for  its  success. 

"A  simpel  creature,"  he  says,  "hath  translated  the 
Scripture  out  of  Latin  into  Englische.  First,  this  simpel 
creature  had  much  travayle  with  divers  fellows  and 
helpers  to  gather  many  old  Bibles  and  other  doctors 
and  glosses  to  make  one  Latin  Bible  some  deal  true 


i  He  appears  to  have  stopped  abruptly  in  the  middle  of  the  verse 
(Baruch  iii.  20),  probably  at  the  time  of  his  seizure  for  heresy.  Here 
is  a  specimen  of  his  translation,  Psalm  xxiii. : — "  The  Ix>rd  gouerneth 
me  and  no  thing  to  me  shal  lacke ;  in  the  place  of  leswe  where  he  me 
ful  sette.  Ouer  watir  of  fulfilling  he  nurshide  me ;  my  soule  he  con- 
uertide.  He  broghte  down  upon  me  the  sties  of  ri^htwiseness;  for 
his  name.  For  whi  and  if  I  shal  go  in  the  myddcl  of  the  shadewe  of 
deth  ;  I  shal  not  dreden  euelis,  for  thou  art  with  me.  Thi  yerde  and 
thi  staf ;  the  han  confortid  me.  Thou  hast  maad  redi  in  tin  sighte  a 
bord ;  aghen  them  that  trublyn  me.  Thou  hast  myche  fatted  in  oile 
myn  hed  and  my  chalis  makende  ful  drunken,  hou  right  cler  it  is. 
And  thi  mercy  shall  vnderfolewe  me ;  alle  the  dayis  of  my  lif.  And 
that  I  dwelle  in  the  hous  of  the  Lord  in  to  the  lengthe  of  dayis." 


WYCLIFFE'S   VERSIOtf.  71 

and  then  to  study  it  anew  the  texte  and  any  other  help 
he  might  get,  especially  Lyra  on  the  Old  Testament, 
which  helped  him  much  with  this  work.  The  third 
time  to  counsel  with  olde  grammarians  and  old  divines 
of  hard  words  and.  hard  sentences  how  they  might  best 
be  understood  and  translated,  the  fourth  time  to  trans- 
late as  clearly  as  he  could  to  the  sense,  and  to  have 
many  good  fellows  and  cunnyng  at  the  correcting  of 
the  translacioun.  ...  A  translator  hath  great  nede 
to  studie  well  the  sense  both  before  and  after,  and 
then  also  he  hath  nede  to  live  a  clene  life  and  be  full 
devout  in  preiers,  and  have  not  his  wit  occupied  about 
worldli  things  that  the  Holy  Spyrit  author  of  all  wis- 
dom and  cunnynge  and  truthe  dresse  him  for  his  work 
and  suffer  him  not  to  err."  And  he  concludes  with 
the  prayer,  "  God  grant  to  us  all  grace  to  ken  well  and 
to  kepe  well  Holie  Writ,  and  to  suffer  joiefulli  some 
paine  for  it  at  the  laste." 

Like  all  the  earlier  English  translations,  Wycliffe's 
Bible  was  based  on  the  Latin  Vulgate  of  St.  Jerome; 
and  this  is  the  great  defect  in  his  work,  as  compared 
with  the  versions  that  followed.  He  was  not  capable 
of  consulting  the  original  Greek  and  Hebrew  even  if 
he  had  access  to  them — in  fact,  there  was  probably  no 
man  in  England  at  the  time  capable  of  doing  so;  and 
therefore,  though  he  represents  the  Latin  faithfully  and 
well,  he  of  course  handed  on  its  errors  as  faithfully  as 
its  perfections.  But,  such  as  it  is,  it  is  a  fine  specimen 


72  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

of  fourteenth  century  English.  He  translated  not  for 
scholars  or  for  nobles,  but  for  the  plain  people,  and 
his  style  was  such  as  suited  those  for  whom  he  wrote 
^•plain,  vigorous,  homely,  and  yet  with  all  its  homeli- 
ness full  of  a  solemn  grace  and  dignity,  which 
made  men  feel  that  they  were  reading  no  ordinary 
book.  He  uses  many  striking  expressions,  such 
as  2  Tim.  ii.  4,  "No  man  holding  knighthood  to 
God,  wlappith  himself  with  worldli  nedes;"  and 
many  of  the  best-known  phrases  in  our  present 
Bible  originated  with  him,  e.g.,  "  the  beame  and 
the  mote,"  "the  depe  thingis  of  God,"  "strait  is  the 
gate  and  narewe  is  the  waye,"  "no  but  a  man  schall 
be  born  againe,"  "the  cuppe  of  blessing  which  we 
blessen,"  &c.,  &c. 

Here  is  a  specimen  from  Wycliffe's  Gospels,  and  it 
will  be  an  interesting  illustration  of  the  growth  of  our 
language  to  compare  it,  on  the  one  hand,  with  the 
specimens  400  years  earlier  given  in  the  previous 
chapter,  and  on  the  other  with  the  present  Revised 
Version,  which  is  later  in  date  by  500  years.  The 
resemblance  to  the  latter  will  be  still  more  marked  if 
the  sound  only  is  followed,  disregarding  the  spelling. 
It  is  somewhere  recorded  that  at  a  meeting  in  York- 
shire recently  a  long  passage  of  Wycliffe's  Bible  was 
read,  which  was  quite  intelligible  throughout  to  those 
who  heard  it. 


WYCLIFFE'S   VERSION.  73 

MATT.  m.  1-6.—  In  tbilfte  &a$es  came  3oon 
Baptist  precb?nge  in  tbe  besert  of  3ube, 
easing,  Bo  $e  penaunce  :  for  tbe  fcpng&om 
of  beuens  sbali  netflb.  foreotbe  tbis  is 
be  of  vobom  it  is  eal&  bs  HJsa^e  tbe  pro* 
pbete,  H  voice  of  a  cr^inge  in  besert,  flDafce 
^e  ret)^  tbe  wa^es  of  tbe  Xor&,  mahe  $e 
tigbtful  tbe  patbee  of  bpm*  foreotbe 
tbat  ilhe  3oon  bafcfce  clotb  of  tbe  beerie  of 
cameplis  an?)  a  girbil  of  sfc^n  about  bie 
leen&ie;  sotbel?  bie  mete  weren  locuetie 
anb  bon^  of  tbe  wofce*  ^banne  Jeruea- 
lem  voente  out  to  bi?mt  anb  al  3u&et  anb  al 
tbe  cuntre  aboute  3orDant  an&  tbei  weren 
cr^eteneb  of  b?m  in  3ort>an,  ftnowlecb^nge 
tbere 


It  will  be  seen  that  this  specimen  is  not  divided  into 
verses.  Verse  division  belongs  to  a  much  later  period,1 
and  though  convenient  for  reference,  it  sometimes 
spoils  the  sense  a  good  deal.  The  division  into  chap- 
ters appears  in  WyclifTe's  as  in  our  own  Bibles.  This 

1  It  first  appears  in  the  Geneva  Bible,  1560.  See  p.  112.  We 
owe  it  to  Robert  Stephen,  the  celebrated  editor  of  the  Greek  Testa- 
ment, who  hurriedly  arranged  it  on  a  journey  from  Paris  to  Lyons. 
"  I  think,"  a  commentator  quaintly  remarks,  "it  had  been  better  done 
on  his  knees  in  the  closet." 


?4  SOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

chapter  division  had  shortly  before  been  made  by  a 
Cardinal  Hugo,1  for  the  purpose  of  a  Latin  Concord- 
ance, and  its  convenience  brought  it  quickly  into  use. 
But,  like  the  verse  division,  it  is  often  very  badly  done, 
the  object  aimed  at  seeming  to  be  uniformity  of  length 
rather  than  any  natural  division  of  the  subject.3  Some- 
times a  chapter  breaks  off  in  the  middle  of  a  narrative 
or  an  argument,  and,  especially  in  St.  Paul's  epistles, 
the  incorrect  division  often  becomes  misleading.  The 
removal  as  far  as  possible  of  these  divisions  is  one  of 
the  advantages  of  the  Revised  Version  as  will  be  noticed 
later  on. 

§  5.  The  book  had  a  very  wide  circulation.  While 
the  Anglo-Saxon  versions  were  confined  for  the  most 
part  to  the  few  religious  houses  where  they  were 
written,  Wycliffe's  Bible,  in  spite  of  its  disadvantage 
being  only  in  manuscript,  was  circulated  largely 
through  the  kingdom;  and  though  the  cost  re- 
stricted its  possession  to  the  wealthier  classes,8  those 

»The  writer  remembers  the  question  at  a  Divinity  examination, 
"Who  divided  the  Bible  into  chapters ?"  to  which  a  fellow  student 
promptly  replied,  "  Victor  Hugo,  sir !  "  "  Quite  right,"  said  the  ex- 
aminer, whose  hearing  was  defective. 

*  Compare,  for  example,  the  beginnings  of  Matt,  x.,  xx.  ;  Mark  Hi., 
ix. ;  Luke  xxi. ;  Acts  viii. ;  I  Cor.  xi. ;  2  Cor.  v.,  vii.,  &c.,  £c.  An 
awkward  division  for  a  clergyman  reading  the  lessons  is  at  end  of 
Acts  xxi.,  where,  however  he  may  manage  his  voice,  it  is  difficult  to 
avoid  reading,  "Paul  spake  in  the  Hebrew  tongue,  saying,  Here 
endrth  the  second  lesson." 

3  Kven  now,  after  500  years,  one  hundred  and  seventy  of  these  copies 
remain,  some  of  them  of  great  interest  from  the  inscriptions  on  their 


WYCLIFFE'S   VERSION.  75 

who  could  not  hope  to  possess  it  gained  access  to 
it  too,  as  well  through  their  own  efforts  as  through 
the  ministrations  of  Wycliffe's  "pore  priestes."  A 
considerable  sum  was  paid  for  even  a  few  sheets  of 
the  manuscript,  a  load  of  hay  was  given  for  permis- 
sion to  read  it  for  a  certain  period  one  hour  a  day'1 
and  those  who  could  not  afford  even  such  expenses 
adopted  what  means  they  could.  It  is  touching  to 
read  such  incidents  as  that  of  one  Alice  Collins,  sent 
for  to  the  little  gatherings  "to  recite  the  ten  command- 
ments and  parts  of  the  Epistles  of  SS.  Paul  and  Peter, 
which  she  knew  by  heart."  "Certes,"  says  old  John 
Foxe  in  his  "Book  of  Martyrs,"  "the  zeal  of  those 
Christian  days  seems  much  superior  to  this  of  our  day, 

title-pages.  One  bears  the  name  of  Henry  VI.,  another  of  Richard, 
the  crookbacked  Duke  of  Gloucester,  others  belonged  to  Henry  VII. 
and  Edward  VI.,  and  one  has  an  inscription  telling  that  it  was  pre- 
sented to  Queen  Elizabeth  as  a  birthday  gift  by  one  of  her  chaplains. 
1  The  readers,  as  might  be  expected,  often  surreptitiously  copying 
portions  of  special  interest.  One  is  reminded  of  the  story  in  ancient 
Irish  history  of  a  curious  decision  arising  out  of  an  incident  of  this 
kind  nearly  a  thousand  years  before,  which  seems  to  have  influenced 
the  history  of  Christianity  in  Britain.  St.  Columb,  on  a  visit  to  the 
aged  St.  Finian  in  Ulster,  had  permission  to  read  in  the  Psalter  be- 
longing to  his  host.  But  every  night  while  the  good  old  saint  was 
sleeping,  the  young  one  was  busy  in  the  chapel  writing  by  a  miracu- 
lous light  till  he  had  completed  a  copy  of  the  whole  Psalter.  The 
owner  of  the  Psalter  discovering  this,  demanded  that  it  should  be 
given  up,  as  it  had  been  copied  unlawfully  from  his  book ;  while  the 
copyist  insisted  that,  the  materials  and  labor  being  his,  he  was  entitled 
to  what  he  had  written.  The  dispute  was  referred  to  Diarmad  the 
king  at  Tara,  and  his  decision  (genuinely  Irish)  was  given  in  St. 
Finian's  favor.  "  To  every  book,"  said  he,  "  belongs  its  son-book 
(copy),  as  to  every  cow  belongs  her  calf."  Columb  complained  of  the 
decision  as  unjust,  and  the  dispute  is  said  to  have  been  one  of  the 
causes  of  his  leaving  Ireland  for  lona  (see  note,  p.  48). 


76  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

and  to  see  the  travail  of  them  may  well  shame  our 
careless  times." 

But  such  study  was  carried  on  at  a  terrible  risk. 
The  appearance  of  WyclifTe's  Bible  aroused  at  once 
fierce  opposition.  A  bill  was  brought  into  Parlia- 
ment to  forbid  the  circulation  of  the  Scriptures  in  Eng- 
lish ;  but  the  sturdy  John  of  Gaunt  vigorously  asserted 
the  right  of  the  people  to  have  the  Word  of  God  in 
their  own  tongue;  "for  why,"  said  he,  "are  we  to  be 
the  dross  of  the  nations  ?"  However,  the  rulers  of  the 
Church  grew  more  and  more  alarmed  at  the  circulation 
of  the  book.  At  length  Archbishop  Arundel,  a  zealous 
but  not  very  learned  prelate,  complained  to  the  Pope 
of  "that  pestilent  wretch,  John  WyclifTe,  the  son  of 
the  old  Serpent,  the  forerunner  of  Antichrist,  who  had 
completed  his  iniquity  by  inventing  a  new  translation 
of  the  Scriptures ; "  and  shortly  after,  the  Convocation  of 
Canterbury  forbade  such  translations,  under  penalty  of 
the  major  excommunication.1 

"God  grant  us/'  runs  the  prayer  in  the  old  Bible 


i  Their  reasons  were  worthy  of  the  Archbishop  who  was  at  their 
head.  "  It  is  a  dangerous  thing,  as  witnesseth  blessed  St.  Jerome,  to 
translate  the  text  of  the  Scripture  out  of  one  tongue  into  another,  for 
in  the  translation  the  sense  is  not  always  easily  kept.  We  therefore 
decree  and  ordain  that  no  man  hereafu-r  by  his  own  authority  trans- 
late any  text  of  the  Scripture  into  English  or  any  other  tongue  by  way 
of  l>ook,  pamphlet,  or  treatise,  and  that  no  man  read  any  such  book, 
pamphlet,  or  treatise  now  lately  composed  in  the  time  of  John  \\'y- 
clifie,  or  hereafter  to  be  set  forth,  under  pain  of  the  major  excommuni- 
cation, until  the  said  translation  be  approved  by  the  ordinary  of  the 
place  or  the  Council  Provincial." 


FROM  A  COPY  OF  WYCL1FFE  S  BIBLE,   SUPPOSED  TO  HAVE  BELONGED  TO  JOHN  OF  GAUNT. 
THE  ROYAL  ARMS  ARE  INSCRIBED  ON  ITS  FIRST  LEAF. 


WYCLIFFE'S    VERSION.  77 

preface,  "to  ken  and  to  kepe  well  Holie  Writ,  and  to 
suffer  joiefulli  some  paine  for  it  at  the  laste."  What  a 
meaning  that  prayer  must  have  gained  when  the  read- 
ers of  the  book  were  burned  with  the  copies  round 
their  necks,  when  men  and  women  were  executed  for 
teaching  their  children  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  ten  com- 
mandments in  English,  when  husbands  were  made  to 
witness  against  their  wives,  and  children  forced  to 
light  the  death-fires  of  their  parents,  and  possessors  of 
the  banned  Wycliffe  Bible  were  hunted  down  as  if 
they  were  wild  beasts. 

Thus  did  Wycliffe,  in  his  effort  for  the  spread  of  the 
Gospel  of  Peace,  bring,  like  his  Master  fourteen  cen- 
turies before,  "not  peace  but  a  sword."  Every  bold 
attempt  to  let  in  the  light  on  long-standing  darkness 
seems  to  result  first  in  a  fierce  opposition  from  the  evil 
creatures  that  delight  in  the  darkness,  and  the  weak 
creatures  weakened  by  dwelling  in  it  so  long.  It  is 
not  till  the  driving  back  of  the  evil  and  the  strengthen- 
ing of  the  weak,  as  the  light  gradually  wins  its  way, 
that  the  true  results  can  be  seen.  It  is,  to  use  a  simile 
of  a  graceful  modern  writer,1  as  when  you  raise  with 
your  staff  an  old  flat  stone,  with  the  grass  forming  a 
little  hedge,  as  it  were,  around  it  as  it  lies.  "  Beneath 
it,  what  a  revelation!  Blades  of  grass  flattened  down, 
colorless,  matted  together,  as  if  they  had  been 
bleached  and  ironed;  hideous  crawling  things;  black 

» Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  in  the  «  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast-table." 


78  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

crickets  with  their  long  filaments  sticking  out  on  all 
sides;  motionless,  slug-like  creatures;  young  larvae, 
perhaps  more  horrible  in  their  pulpy  stillness  than  in 
the  infernal  wriggle  of  maturity.  But  no  sooner  is  the 
stone  turned  and  the  wholesome  light  of  day  let  in  on 
this  compressed  and  blinded  community  of  creeping 
things  than  all  of  them  that  have  legs  rush  blindly 
about,  butting  against  each  other  and  everything  else 
in  their  way,  and  end  in  a  general  stampede  to  under- 
ground retreats  from  the  region  poisoned  by  sunshine. 
Next  year  you  will  find  the  grass  growing  fresh  and 
green  where  the  stone  lay — the  ground  bird  builds  her 
nest  where  the  beetle  had  his  hole,  the  dandelion  and 
the  buttercup  are  growing  there,  and  the  broad  fans  of 
insect-angels  open  and  shut  over  their  golden  discs  as 
the  rhythmic  waves  of  blissful  consciousness  pulsate 
through  their  glorified  being. 

"The  stone  is  ancient  error,  the  grass  is  human 
nature  borne  down  and  bleached  of  all  its  color  by  it, 
the  shapes  that  are  found  beneath  are  the  crafty  beings 
that  thrive  in  the  darkness  and  the  weak  organizations 
kept  helpless  by  it.  He  who  turns  the  stone  is  whoso- 
ever puts  the  staff  of  truth  to  the  old  lying  incubus, 
whether  he  do  it  with  a  serious  face  or  a  laughing  one. 
The  next  year  stands  for  the  coming  time.  Then  shall 
the  nature  which  had  lain  blanched  and  broken  rise  in 
its  full  stature  and  native  lines  in  the  sunshine.  Then 
shall  God's  minstrels  build  their  nests  in  the  hearts  of 


WYCLIFFE'S    VERSION.  79 

a  newborn  humanity.  Then  shall  beauty — divinity 
taking  outline  and  color — light  upon  the  souls  of  men 
as  the  butterfly,  image  of  the  beatified  spirit  rising 
from  the  dust,  soars  from  the  shell  that  held  a  poor 
grub,  which  would  never  have  found  wings  unless 
that  stone  had  been  lifted." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

TYNDALE'S  VERSION. 

§  I.  Printing.  §  2.  Revival  of  Greek  Learning.  §  3.  Tyndale's 
Work.  §  4.  Reception  of  the  Book  in  England.  §  5.  Death 
of  Tyndale.  §  6.  Description  of  Tyndale's  Version. 

§  i.  AFTER  Wycliffe  there  is  an  interval  of  a  hun- 
dred years  before  we  come  to  the  next  great  version  of 
the  Bible,  but  in  that  interval  occurred  what,  more  than 
any  other  event  that  ever  happened,  has  affected  the 
history  of  the  English  Bible,  and  indeed  the  history  of 
the  English  nation  altogether.  Up  to  this  time  in  wild 
lona,  in  the  monasteries  of  ancient  Britain,  in  the  great 
homes  of  learning  through  the  continent  of  Europe, 
men  and  women  sat  in  the  silence  of  their  cells  slowly 
copying  out  letter  by  letter  the  pages  of  the  Scripture 
manuscripts,  watching  patiently  month  after  month 
the  volumes  grow  beneath  their  hands.  But  with 
WyclifTe's  days  this  toilsome  manuscript  period  closes 
forever. 

About  twenty  years  after  the  death  of  Wycliffe  there 
was  living  in  the  old  German  town  of  Mentz  a  boy 
bearing  the  not  very  attractive  name  of  Johann 
Gensfleisch,  which  means,  put  into  plain  English,  John 

80 


TYND  ALE'S  VERSION.  81 

Gooseflesh.  One  morning  —  so  runs  the  story  —  he  had 
been  cutting  the  letters  of  his  name  out  of  the  bark  of 
a  tree,  and  having  been  left  alone  in  the  house  soon 
after,  amused  himself  by  spreading  out  the  letters  on 
a  board  so  as  to  form  again  the  words, 

Jobann  (Bensfletecb. 

A  pot  of  purple  dye  was  beside  the  fire,  and  by  some 
awkward  turn  one  of  his  letters  dropped  into  it. 
Quickly,  without  stopping  to  think,  he  snatched  it  out 
of  the  boiling  liquid,  and  as  quickly  let  it  drop  again, 
this  time  on  a  white  dressed  skin  which  lay  on  a  bench 
near  by,  the  result  being  a  beautiful  purple  b  on  a  deep 
yellowish  white  ground.  Whether  the  boy  admired 
the  beautiful  marks  on  the  skin  or  meditated  ruefully 
of  future  marks  on  his  own  skin  as  a  possible  conse- 
quence history  does  not  record,  but  it  would  seem  as 
if  somehow  that  image  rooted  itself  in  his  mind,  to 
bear  rich  fruit  on  a  future  day.  For,  thirty  years 
afterward,  when  all  Germany  was  ringing  with  the 
name  of  Johann  Gutenberg  and  his  magical  art  of 
printing,  the  good  people  of  Mentz  recognized  in 
the  inventor  their  young  townsman  Gensfleisch,  who 
had  meantime  taken  his  maternal  name.1  Whatever 
truth  there  may  be  in  the  legend,  certain  it  is  that 


was  the  son  of  Frilo  Gensfleisch  and  Elsie  Gutenberg.  The 
German  law  recognized  in  certain  cases  this  taking  of  the  maternal 
name. 


82  HOW   WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

Gutenberg's  printing  press  was  working  in  Mentz 
about  the  year  1450,  and  the  first  completed  book 
that  issued  from  that  press  is  said  to  have  been  the 
Latin  Bible.1 

This  is  not  the  place  to  tell  what  has  been  so  often 
told  already  of  the  immense  influence  of  this  new  in- 
vention on  the  progress  of  knowledge  in  the  world. 
We  have  but  to  do  with  its  effects  as  manifested  in  the 
history  of  the  Bible,  and  for  this  it  will  be  sufficient 
to  remark  that  the  Bible  which  took  WyclifTe's  copyists 
ten  months  to  prepare  can  now  be  produced  by  a 
single  London  firm  at  the  rate  of  120  per  hour,  that  is, 
two  copies  every  minute;  while,  for  cost  of  produc- 
tion, we  may  compare  the  Wycliffe  Bible  at  a  price 
equal  to  ^40  of  our  money,3  with  a  New  Testament 
complete  in  paper  covers  that  has  lately  been  published 
for  one  penny! 

§  2.  Another  event  of  the  same  period  of  very  great 
importance  in  our  Bible  history  was  the  revival  of 
Greek  learning  in  Europe.  The  reader  will  remember 
that  up  to  this  time  our  pile  of  "  ANCIENT  MANUSCRIPTS  " 

•It  is  known  as  the  Mazarin  Bible,  from  the  fact  that  a  copy  of  it 
was  found  about  a  century  ago  in  Cardinal  Mazarin's  library  at  Paris. 

«  Mr.  Froude  ("  Hist.  Eng.")  has  some  interesting  pages  to  show  the 
value  of  money  in  those  days.  A  pig  or  a  goose  was  bought  for  4d., 
a  chicken  for  id.,  a  hen  for  ad. ;  land  was  let  at  8d.  per  acre; 
laborers  were  hired  at  id.  per  day;  the  stipend  of  a  parish  priest 
was  £$t  6s.  8d.  a  year ;  and  Bradford,  the  martyr,  writes  of  his  fellow- 
ship at  Oxford,  "  It  is  worth  £7  a  year  to  me,  so  you  see  what  a  good 
lord  God  is  to  me." 


TYND ALE'S   VERSION.  83 

remains  untouched,  the  English  Scriptures  being  trans- 
lated not  from  the  original  Greek  and  Hebrew,  but 
from  the  Latin  Vulgate,  which  itself,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  only  a  translation.1  For  many  centuries  Greek 
was  practically  unknown  in  Western  Europe,  but 
about  this  time  gradually  the  study  was  revived. 
"Greece,"  it  has  been  finely  said,  "rose  from  the 
grave  with  the  New  Testament  in  her  hand,"  and  be- 
fore the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  "  new  learn- 
ing "  had  become  an  important  part  of  university  edu- 
cation in  Europe. 

§  3.  At  this  critical  period  came  forth  the  man  who 
was  to  use  these  new  powers  with  such  marvellous  ef- 
fect in  the  service  of  the  English  Bible.  In  1483,  the 
year  after  the  birth  of  Luther,  and  a  hundred  years 
after  the  death  of  Wycliffe,  William  Tyndale  was 
born.  He  grew  up  a  thoughtful,  studious  youth,  and 
at  an  early  age  won  for  himself  in  Oxford  a  distin- 
guished position  for  scholarship.  Soon  afterward  he 
moved  to  Cambridge,  where  he  met  with  Erasmus,  _• 
the  greatest  Greek  scholar  of  the  day,  who  had  just 
completed  his  Greek  Testament  from  a  comparison  of 
some  ancient  manuscripts.  Tyndale  quickly  made 
himself  familiar  with  this  wonderful  new  book.  He 
took  it  up  probably  at  first  as  a  curious  work  of  scholar- 
ship, but  he  soon  found  that  there  was  more  in  it  than 

1See  Diagram  facing  title-page. 


84  SOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

this;  and  like  his  great  contemporary  Luther,  and  al- 
most at  the  same  time,  he  read  again  and  again  with 
ever  deepening  interest  the  wondrous  revelation  of  the 
love  of  God  to  man,  till  his  spirit  was  stirred  to  its 
depths.  He  could  not  keep  his  treasure  to  himself. 
He  argued  with  the  priests,  and  exhorted  them  to  the 
study  of  the  Scriptures  for  themselves;  and  it  was 
about  this  time  that  one  day,  in  the  sudden  heat  of 
controversy,  he  startled  all  around  by  his  memorable 
declaration,  whose  fulfillment  was  afterward  the  ob- 
ject of  his  life.  "  We  had  better,"  said  his  opponent, 
"be  without  God's  laws  than  the  Pope's."  And 
Tyndale  rose  in  his  indignant  wrath.  "I  defy  the 
Pope,"  he  cried,  "and  all  his  laws;  and  if  God  spare 
me  I  will  one  day  make  the  boy  that  drives  the  plough 
in  England  to  know  more  of  Scripture  than  the  Pope 
does."1 

He  had  already  translated  some  portions  from  the 
original  Greek,  and  now,  encouraged  by  the  report  he 
had  heard  of  him  as  a  patron  of  learning,  he  applied 
confidently  to  Cuthbert  Tonstal,  Bishop  of  London,  for 
permission  to  carry  on  his  work  in  the  episcopal  palace 
under  his  lordship's  patronage.  But  translation  of 
classical  authors  was  a  very  different  thing  from 

'An  edition  of  Tyndale's  Testament,  prepared  during  his  imprison- 
ment, is  sometimes  spoken  of  as  the  literal  fulfillment  of  this  vow — a 
Testament  for  the  ploughboys  of  his  native  county.  It  contains  words 
seemingly  of  a  provincial  dialect — faether,  maester,  sloene,  oones, 
whorsse,  &c.  Most  probably,  however,  these  peculiarities  are  due  to 
ft  Flemish  proof-reader. 


TYND ALE'S  VERSION.  85 

translation  of  the  Scriptures,  and  the  bishop  chill- 
ingly replied  that  there  was  no  room  in  the  palace 
for  carrying  on  such  a  work.  However,  he  was 
kindly  received  by  Humphrey  Monmouth,  a  Lon- 
don merchant,  and  in  his  house  for  nearly  a  year 
he  assiduously,  though  very  quietly,  prosecuted  his 
task. 

But  that  year  of  contact  with  the  ecclesiastics  of  the 
city  plainly  showed  him  that  no  mercy  would  be  ex- 
tended to  any  movement  which  disturbed  their  quiet. 
He  saw  men  around  him  led  to  prison  and  to  death  for 
possessing  or  reading  a  copy  of  Luther's  writings,  and 
he  knew  well  that  a  Bible  translation  would  be  a  still 
more  dangerous  book.  "Wherefore,"  he  sadly  says, 
"I  perceived  that  not  only  in  my  lord  of  London's 
palace,  but  in  all  England,  there  was  no  room  for  at- 
tempting a  translation  of  the  Scriptures."1 

Tyndale  was  not  one  of  those  who,  having  put  their 
hands  to  the  plough,  look  back.  He  had  determined 
that  England  should  have  the  Word  of  God  spread 
among  her  people  by  means  of  this  new  invention  of 
printing,  and  he  had  calmly  counted  the  cost.  If  his 
work  could  be  done  in  England,  well.  If  not — if  only 
a  life  of  exile  could  accomplish  it — then  that  life  of 
exile  he  would  cheerfully  accept.  So  in  1524  he  left 
his  native  land,  never  to  see  it  again ;  and  at  Hamburg, 

» Tyndale's  Preface. 


86  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

in  poverty  and  distress,  and  amid  constant  danger,  the 
brave-hearted  exile  worked  at  his  translation,1  and  so 
diligently  that  the  following  year  we  find  him  at 
Cologne  with  the  sheets  of  his  quarto  New  Testament 
already  in  the  printer's  hands. 

But  a  sad  disappointment  was  in  store  for  him.  He 
had  kept  his  secret  well,  and  he  hoped  that  in  a  few 
months  more  the  little  book  would  be  spreading  in 
thousands  through  the  length  and  breadth  of  England. 
But  just  as  his  hopes  were  highest,  one  day  there  came 
to  him  a  hurried  message  at  his  lodgings,  and  half  dis- 
tracted he  rushed  to  the  printer's  house,  seized  all  the 
sheets  he  could  lay  hands  on,  and  fled  from  the  town. 
A  priest  named  Cochlaeus  had  heard  an  idle  boast  of 
some  printers  which  roused  his  suspicions,  and  by  dili- 
gently plying  them  with  wine  the  startling  secret  at 
length  came  out  that  an  English  New  Testament  was 
actually  in  the  press,  and  already  far  on  its  way  to 
completion.  Quite  horrified  at  such  a  conspiracy, 
' '  worse, "  he  thought,  ' '  than  that  of  the  eunuchs  against 
Ahasuerus,"  he  at  once  gave  information  to  the  magis- 
trates, and  demanded  that  the  sheets  should  be  seized, 
while  he  at  the  same  time  despatched  a  messenger  to 


•  He  seems  to  have  had  no  help  in  the  translation.  For  correct- 
ing proofs  and  such  work  he  had  one  Friar  Roye,  whom  he  rather 
humorously  describes.  "  As  long  as  he  had  no  money  I  could  some- 
what rule  him,  but  as  soon  as  he  had  gotten  him  money  he  became 
like  himself  again.  So  as  soon  as  I  was  ended  I  bade  him  farewell 
for  our  two  lives,  and  as  men  say  a  day  longer." 


TYNDALE1 8   VERSION.  87 

the  English  bishops  to  warn  them  of  this  unexpected 
danger.  Hence  the  consternation  of  Tyndale  and  his 
hurried  flight  from  Cologne. 

With  his  precious  sheets  he  escaped  to  Worms, 
where  the  enthusiasm  for  Luther  and  the  Reformation 
was  then  at  its  height,  and  there  at  length  he  accom- 
plished his  design,  producing  for  the  first  time  a  com- 
plete printed  New  Testament  in  English.1  Knowing 
of  the  information  that  Cochlaeus  had  given,  and  that 
in  consequence  the  books  would  be  jealously  watched, 
he  printed  also  an  edition  in  smaller  size,  as  more 
likely  to  escape  detection,  and  at  once  made  pro- 
vision for  the  forwarding  his  dangerous  merchandise 
to  England.  In  cases,  in  barrels,  in  bales  of  cloth, 
in  sacks  of  flour,  every  secret  way  that  could  be 
devised,  the  books  were  sent;  and  in  spite  of  the 
utmost  vigilance  in  watching  the  ports,  many  of  them 
arrived  and  were  scattered  far  and  wide  through  the 
country. 


i  Canon  Westcott  ("  Hist.  Bible  ")  quotes  an  interesting  account  of 
Tyndale 's  work  at  Worms,  from  the  diary  of  a  German  scholar  who 
was  a  casual  visitor  there  in  1526.  After  mentioning  other  subjects  of 
conversation  at  the  dinner-table,  the  writer  goes  on  to  say — "  One  told 
us  that  6,000  copies  of  the  English  New  Testament  had  been  printed 
at  Worms,  that  it  was  translated  by  an  Englishman  who  lived  there 
with  two  of  his  countrymen,  who  was  so  complete  a  master  of  seven 
languages — Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin,  Italian,  Spanish,  English,  French — 
that  you  would  fancy  that  whichever  he  spoke  in  was  his  native 
tongue.  He  told  us  also  that  the  English,  in  spite  of  the  active  oppo- 
sition of  the  King,  were  so  eager  for  the  Gospel  that  they  would  buy 
the  New  Testament  even  if  they  had  to  give  100,000  pieces  of  money 
for  it." 


88  SOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

§  4.  Such  a  commotion  as  they  created  among  the 
hostile  clergy!  Wycliffe's  Testaments  had  been  trou- 
blesome enough,  even  though  it  took  months  to  finish 
a  single  copy  and  the  cost  was  in  a  great  measure  pro- 
hibitive. But  here  were  books  pouring  into  the 
country  capable  of  being  produced  at  the  rate  of 
hundreds  per  day,  and  at  a  price  within  the  reach  of 
all.  Vigorous  measures  indeed  would  be  necessary 
now! 

The  warning  of  Cochlaeus  had  set  them  on  their 
guard,  and  every  port  was  carefully  watched  by  of- 
ficers appointed  for  the  purpose.  Thousands  of  copies 
were  thus  seized  in  their  various  disguises,  and  were 
burned  with  solemn  ceremony  at  the  old  cross  of  St. 
Paul's,  as  "a  burnt-offering  most  pleasing  to  Almighty 
God; " l  and  still  other  thousands  supplied  their  place.* 
Tyndale  was  but  little  discouraged  at  their  efforts,  for 
he  knew  that  the  printing  press  could  defy  them  all. 
"In  burning  the  book,"  he  says,  "they  did  none  other 
thing  than  I  looked  for;  no  more  shall  they  do  if  they 
burn  me  also,  if  it  be  God's  will  that  it  should  be  so." 

It  was  quite  clear  that  they  could  not  hinder  the 
entrance  of  the  book  into  England.  And  then  a  bril- 
liant thought  occurred  to  the  Bishop  of  London.  He 
sought  out  Augustine  Pakington,  a  merchant  trading 

1  Cardinal  Campeggio's  letter  to  Wolsey. 

•  About  15,000  of  his  first  New  Testament  were  issued  within  four 
years. 


TYND ALE'S  VERSlOtf.  89 

to  Antwerp,  and  asked  his  opinion  about  the  buying 
up  of  all  the  copies  across  the  water. 

"My  lord,"  replied  Pakington,  who  was  a  secret 
friend  of  Tyndale,  "  if  it  be  your  pleasure  I  could  do  in 
this  matter  probably  more  than  any  merchant  in  Eng- 
land ;  so  if  it  be  your  lordship's  pleasure  to  pay  for 
them — for  1  must  disburse  money  for  them — I  will  in- 
sure you  to  have  every  book  that  remains  unsold." 

"  Gentle  Master  Pakington,''  said  the  bishop,  "  deem- 
yng  that  he  hadde  God  by  the  toe,  whanne  in  truthe 
he  hadde,  as  after  he  thought,  the  devyl  by  the  fiste,"  * 
"do  your  diligence  and  get  them  for  me,  and  I  will 
gladly  give  you  whatever  they  may  cost,  for  the  books 
are  naughty,  and  I  intend  surely  to  destroy  them  all, 
and  to  burn  them  at  Paul's  Cross." 

A  few  weeks  later  Pakington  sought  the  translator, 
whose  funds  he  knew  were  at  a  low  ebb. 

"Master  Tyndale,"  he  said,  "I  have  found  you  a 
good  purchaser  for  your  books." 

"Who  is  he  ?"  asked  Tyndale. 

"My  lord  of  London." 

"But  if  the  bishop  wants  the  books  it  must  be  only 
to  burn  them." 

"  Well,"  was  the  reply,  "what  of  that  ?  The  bishop 
will  burn  them  anyhow,  and  it  is  best  that  you  should 
have  the  money  for  the  enabling  you  to  imprint  others 
instead." 

»  «  Halle's  Chronicle." 


90  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

And  so  the  bargain  was  made.  "The  bishop  had 
the  books,  Pakington  had  the  thanks,  and  Tyndale  had 
the  money." 

" I  am  the  gladder,"  quoth  Tyndale,  "for  these  two 
benefits  shall  come  thereof.  I  shall  get  money  to  bring 
myself  out  of  debt,  and  the  whole  world  will  cry  out 
against  the  burning  of  God's  Word,  and  the  overplus 
of  the  money  that  shall  remain  with  me  shall  make  me 
more  studious  to  correct  the  said  New  Testament,  and 
so  newly  to  imprint  the  same  once  again,  and  I  trust 
the  second  will  be  much  better  than  ever  was  the 
first." 

The  Chronicle  l  which  relates  the  story  goes  on  to 
tell  that— "After  this  Tyndale  corrected  the  same  Tes- 
taments again,  and  caused  them  to  be  newly  imprinted, 
so  that  they  came  thick  and  threefold  into  England. 
The  bishop  sent  for  Pakington  again,  and  asked  how 
the  Testaments  were  still  so  abundant.  '  My  lord,'  re- 
plied the  merchant,  '  it  were  best  for  your  lordship  to 
buy  up  the  stamps  too  by  the  which  they  are  im- 
printed.' " 

It  is  with  evident  enjoyment  that  the  old  chronicler 
presents  to  us  another  scene  as  a  sequel  to  the  story. 
A  prisoner,  a  suspected  heretic  named  Constantine, 
was  being  tried  a  few  months  later  before  Sir  Thomas 
More.  "  Now  Constantine,"  said  the  judge,  "  I  would 
have  thee  to  be  plain  with  me  in  one  thing  that  I  shall 

• «'  Halle's  Chronicle." 


TYND ALE'S   VERSION.  91 

ask,  and  I  promise  thee  I  will  show  thee  favor  in  all 
other  things  whereof  thou  art  accused.  There  are  be- 
yond the  sea  Tyndale,  Joye,  and  a  great  many  of  you; 
I  know  they  cannot  live  without  help.  There  must  be 
some  that  help  and  succor  them  with  money,  and 
thou,  being  one  of  them,  hadst  thy  part  thereof,  and 
therefore  knowest  from  whence  it  came.  I  pray  thee, 
tell  me  who  be  they  that  help  them  thus." 

"My  lord,"  quoth  Constantine,  "I  will  tell  thee 
truly — it  is  the  Bishop  of  London  that  hath  holpen  us, 
for  he  hath  bestowed  among  us  a  great  deal  of  money 
upon  New  Testaments  to  burn  them,  and  that  hath 
been  our  chief  succor  and  comfort." 

"Now  by  my  troth,"  quoth  Sir  Thomas  More,  "I 
think  even  the  same,  for  I  told  the  bishop  thus  much 
before  he  went  about  it." 

The  opponents  of  the  book  began  at  last  to  see  that 
a  printed  Testament  continually  being  produced  was 
quite  beyond  their  power  to  destroy.  Bishop  Tonstal 
profited  by  his  lesson,  and  instead  of  buying  and 
burning  the  book  any  longer,  he  preached  a  famous 
sermon  at  Paul's  Cross,  declaring  its  "  naughtiness," 
and  asserting  that  he  himself  had  found  in  it  more 
than  two  thousand  errors;1  and  at  the  close  of  his 
sermon  he  hurled  the  copy  which  he  held  into  a  great 


10 There  is  not  so  much  as  one  i  therein,"  says  Tyndale,  "if  it  lack 
the  tittle  over  its  head,  but  they  have  noted  and  number  it  to  the 
ignorant  people  for  a  heresy." 


92  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

fire  that  blazed  before  him.  Sir  Thomas  More,  whose 
influence  was  deservedly  great  in  England,  followed 
up  the  attack.  "  To  study  to  find  errors  in  Tyndale's 
book,"  he  said,  "were  like  studying  to  find  water  in 
the  sea."  It  was  even  too  bad  for  revising  and  amend- 
ing, "  for  it  is  easier  to  make  a  web  of  new  cloth  than 
it  is  to  sew  up  every  hole  in  a  net."1  Tyndale  indig- 
nantly replied  to  this  attack;  and  certainly  his  oppo- 
nent does  not  show  to  advantage  in  the  argument,  his 
sweeping  charge  narrowing  itself  down  at  the  last  to 
the  mistranslation  of  half  a  dozen  words. 

Such  attacks,  made  from  different  pulpits  through- 
out the  land,  were  much  more  effective  than  the 
previous  stupid  measures  adopted  against  the  Bible, 
chiefly  because  the  people  could  seldom  hear  the 
refutation.  But  this  was  not  always  so.  The  friends 
of  the  Reformation  were  increasing  in  England,  and 
they  as  well  as  Tyndale  defended  the  book  when  they 
could,  and  generally  with  success. 

In  1529  Latimer  had  preached  at  Cambridge  his 
celebrated  sermons  "On  the  Card,"  which  attracted  a 
good  deal  of  attention,  arguing  in  favor  of  the  trans- 
lation and  universal  reading  of  Holy  Scripture.  The 


1  More's  animus  against  Tyndale  is  amusingly  shown  in  his  descrip- 
tion of  the  translation  of  Jonah — "  Jonas  made  out  by  Tyndale — a  book 
that  whoso  delyte  therein  shall  stande  in  peril  that  Jonas  was  never 
so  swallowed  up  by  the  whale  as  by  the  delyte  of  that  booke  a  mannes 
soul  may  be  swallowed  up  by  the  Devyl  that  he  shall  never  have  the 
grace  to  get  out  again." 


TYND ALE'S   VERSION.  93 

friars  were  enraged,  and  the  more  so  as  his  reasoning 
was  so  difficult  to  answer.  At  length  they  selected  a 
champion,  Friar  Buckingham;  and  certainly,  if  he  may 
be  taken  as  a  type  of  the  friars  of  his  day,  the  Re- 
formers' sneers  at  their  ignorance  were  not  without 
grounds.1  A  Sunday  was  fixed  on  which  he  was  to 
demolish  the  arguments  of  Latimer,  and  on  the  ap- 
pointed day  the  people  assembled,  and  a  sermon 
against  Bible  translation  was  preached  which  to  us 
now  must  read  more  like  jest  than  sober  argument. 

"Thus,"  asked  the  preacher  with  a  triumphant 
smile,  "  where  Scripture  saith  no  man  that  layeth  his 
hand  to  the  plough  and  looketh  back  is  fit  for  the 
kingdom  of  God,  will  not  the  ploughman  when  he 
readeth  these  words  be  apt  forthwith  to  cease  from 
his  plough,  and  then  where  will  be  the  sowing  and 
the  harvest  ?  Likewise  also  whereas  the  baker  read- 
eth, 'A  little  leaven  leaveneth  the  whole  lump,'  will 
he  not  be  forthwith  too  sparing  in  the  use  of  leaven, 
to  the  great  injury  of  our  health.  And  so  also  when 
the  simple  man  reads  the  words,  '  If  thine  eye  offend 
thee  pluck  it  out  and  cast  it  from  thee,'  incontinent  he 
will  pluck  out  his  eyes,  and  so  the  whole  realm  will 


i "  They  said  there  was  a  new  language  discovered  called  Greek, 
of  which  people  should  beware,  since  it  was  that  which  produced  ali 
the  heresies  ;  that  in  this  language  was  come  forth  the  New  Testament, 
which  was  full  of  thorns  and  briars;  that  there  was  another  new 
language  too,  called  Hebrew,  and  they  who  learned  it  were  turned 
Hebrews."— Hody,  De  Textibus  Bibl. 


94  HOW  WE   GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

be  full  of  blind  men,  to  the  great  decay  of  the  nation 
and  the  manifest  loss  of  the  King's  grace.  And  thus 
by  reading  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  will  the  whole  realm 
come  into  confusion." 

The  next  Sunday  St.  Edward's  Church  was  crowded 
to  suffocation,  for  the  report  had  gone  abroad  that 
Latimer  was  to  reply  to  the  Grey  Friar's  sermon.  At 
the  close  of  the  prayers  the  old  man  ascended  the 
pulpit,  and  amid  breathless  silence  the  sermon  began 
— such  a  crushing,  scathing  rebuke  as  Buckingham 
and  his  party  never  recovered  from  in  Cambridge. 
One  by  one  the  arguments  were  ridiculed  as  too  foolish 
for  a  really  serious  reply.  "  Only  children  and  fools," 
he  said,  "  fail  to  distinguish  between  the  figurative  and 
the  real  meanings  of  language — between  the  image 
which  is  used  and  the  thing  which  that  image  is 
intended  to  represent.  For  example,"  he  continued, 
with  a  withering  glance  at  his  opponent,  who  sat 
before  the  pulpit,  "if  we  paint  a  fox  preaching  in  a 
friar's  hood,  nobody  imagines  that  a  fox  is  meant,  but 
that  craft  and  hypocrisy  are  described,  which  so  often 
are  found  disguised  in  that  garb." 

It  was  evident,  too,  that  many  of  the  people  sympa- 
thized with  the  Reformers  in  such  contests.  Day  by 
day  it  became  clearer  now  that  the  tide  of  public 
opinion  in  England  was  setting  too  strongly  to  be 
resisted  in  favor  of  a  "  People's  Bible."  In  spite  of  all 
opposition  the  book  was  being  everywhere  talked 


TYNDALE  >S   VERSION.  95 

about  and  read.  "It  passeth  my  power,"  writes 
Bishop  Nikke,  complaining  to  the  Primate,  "it  passeth 
my  power,  or  that  of  any  spiritual  man,  to  hinder  it 
now,  and  if  this  continue  much  longer  it  will  undo  us 
all."  There  was  no  room  for  questioning  about  it. 
The  path  of  the  Bible  was  open  at  last.  Nor  king  nor 
pope  could  stay  its  progress  now.  Over  England's 
long  night  of  error  and  superstition  and  soul-crushing 
despotism  God  had  said,  "Let  there  be  light  1"  and 
there  was  light. 

§  5.  But  the  Light-bringer  himself  did  not  see  that 
day.  For  weary  years  he  had  labored  for  it,  a  worn, 
poverty-stricken  exile  in  a  far  away  German  town, 
and  now  when  it  came  his  heroic  life  was  over — the 
prison  and  the  stake  had  done  their  work.  His  ene- 
mies were  many  and  powerful  in  England,  and 
Vaughan,  the  royal  envoy,  had  been  instructed  to 
persuade  him  to  return.  But  Tyndale  refused  to  go. 
"Whatever  promises  of  safety  maybe  made,"  he 
said,  "the  king  would  never  be  able  to  protect  me 
from  the  bishops,  who  believe  that  no  faith  should  be 
kept  with  heretics."  A  friend  of  Sir  Thomas  More 
then  undertook  the  task,  and  a  treacherous  villain 
named  Phillips,  a  clergyman  of  very  plausible  man- 
ners, contrived  to  win  the  confidence  of  the  unsus- 
pecting exile,  "for  Tyndale  was  simple  and  inexpert 
in  the  wily  subtleties  of  the  world."  He  confided 


96  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

in  Phillips  as  a  friend,  loaned  him  money  when  he 
wanted  it  and  utterly  refused  to  listen  to  his  landlord's 
suspicions  about  the  man.  At  length,  their  plans 
being  ripe,  Tyndale  was  enticed  some  distance  from 
his  house,  seized  by  Phillips'  lurking  assistants,  and 
hurried  to  the  dungeons  of  the  Castle  of  Vilvorden.  It 
is  pitiful  to  read  of  the  poor  prisoner  there,  in  his  cold 
and  misery  and  rags,  writing  to  the  governor  to  beg 
"your  lordship,  and  that  by  the  Lord  Jesus,  that  if  I 
am  to  remain  here  during  the  winter,  you  will  request 
the  procureur  to  be  kind  enough  to  send  me  from  my 
goods  which  he  has  in  his  possession  a  warmer  cap, 
for  I  suffer  extremely  from  a  perpetual  catarrh,  which 
is  much  increased  by  this  cell.  A  warmer  coat  also, 
for  that  which  I  have  is  very  thin;  also  a  piece  of 
cloth  to  patch  my  leggings — my  shirts  too  are  worn 
out." 

There  was  no  hope  of  escape  from  the  first.  He 
knew  that  the  clerical  influence  in  England  was  too 
strong  against  him  to  hope  for  any  help  in  that  quarter. 
Long  ago  he  had  said  with  sad  foreboding,  "If  they 
burn  me  also,  they  shall  do  none  other  thing  than  I 
look  for,"  and  now  his  foreboding  was  to  be  realized. 
On  Friday  the  6th  October,  1 536,  he  was  strangled  at 
the  stake  and  then  burned  to  ashes,  fervently  praying 
with  his  last  words,  "  Lord,  open  the  King  of  Eng- 
land's eyes,"  a  prayer  which  was  nearer  to  its  answer 
than  the  heroic  martyr  deemed. 


TYND ALE'S   VERSION.  97 

There  is  no  grander  life  in  the  whole  annals  of  the 
Reformation  than  that  of  William  Tyndale — none 
which  comes  nearer  in  its  beautiful  self-forgetfulness 
to  His  who  "  laid  down  His  life  for  His  sheep."  Many 
a  man  has  suffered  in  order  that  a  great  cause  might 
conquer  by  means  of  himself.  No  such  thought 
sullied  the  self-devotion  of  Tyndale.  He  issued  his 
earlier  editions  of  the  New  Testament  without  a  name, 
"following  the  counsel  of  Christ  which  exhorteth  men 
to  do  their  good  deeds  secretly."  "  I  assure  you,"  said 
he  to  Vaughan,  the  envoy  of  the  king,  "if  it  would 
stand  with  the  king's  most  gracious  pleasure  to  grant 
a  translation  of  the  Scripture  to  be  put  forth  among 
his  people  like  as  it  is  put  forth  among  the  subjects  of 
the  emperor  here,  be  it  the  translation  of  whatsoever 
person  he  pleases,  I  shall  immediately  make  faithful 
promises  never  to  write  more  nor  abide  two  days  in 
these  parts  after  the  same,  but  immediately  repair  unto 
his  realm,  and  there  humbly  submit  myself  at  the  feet 
of  his  royal  majesty,  offering  my  body  to  suffer  what 
pain  or  torture,  yea,  what  death  his  grace  wills,  so  that 
this  be  obtained." 

Poverty  and  distress  and  misrepresentation  were  his 
constant  lot;  imprisonment  and  death  were  ever  star- 
ing him  in  the  face;  but  "  none  of  these  things  moved 
him,  neither  counted  he  his  life  dear  unto  him  "  for  the 
accomplishment  of  the  work  which  God  had  set  him. 

No  higher  honor  could  be  given  to  any  man  than 


98  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

such  a  work  to  accomplish,  and  among  all  the  heroes 
of  the  Reformation  none  worthier  of  that  honor  could 
be  found  than  William  Tyndale. 

§  6.  And  now  a  few  words  about  the,  translation 
itself.  As  we  have  seen  already,  all  the  earlier  English 
versions  were  but  translations  of  a  translation,  being 
derived  from  the  Vulgate  or  older  Latin  versions. 
Tyndale  for  the  first  time  goes  back  to  the  original 
Hebrew  and  Greek,1  though  the  manuscripts  accessible 
in  his  time  were  not  of  much  authority  as  compared 
with  those  used  by  our  revisers  now. 

And  not  only  did  he  go  back  to  the  original  lan- 
guages seeking  for  the  truth,  but  he  embodied  that 
truth  when  found  in  so  noble  a  translation  that  it  has 
been  but  little  improved  on  even  to  the  present  day. 
Every  succeeding  version  is  in  reality  little  more  than  a 
revision  of  Tyndale's;  even  our  present  Authorized 
Version  owes  to  him  chiefly  the  ease  and  beauty  for 
which  it  is  so  admired.  "The  peculiar  genius,"  says 
Mr.  Froude,  "which  breathes  through  the  English 
Bible,  the  mingled  tenderness  and  majesty,  the  Saxon 
simplicity,  the  grandeur,  unequalled,  unapproached  in 
the  attempted  improvements  of  modern  scholars — all 


'See  Diagram  facing  the  title-page.  Besides  Erasmus'  Greek  Tes- 
tament, Tyndale  had  also  before  him  the  Latin  Vulgate  and  Erasmus* 
Latin  translation  of  the  New  Testament.  It  is  said  too  that  he  used 
Lxr*her's  German  Bible. 


^  v  ^"  •*—  r~  *_  — •»  T—  rr  **,  ^»  ^i  ^— 

IflllJillSlli 


•>      ^7       >.        *••      ^*  •«  **      ^*^  vZ^ X    ^^  •     •_* 

ttSif^llifSil 

||s|g|||||ef|| 


TYND ALE'S   VERSION.  99 

are  here,  and  bear  the  impress  of  the  mind  of  one  man, 
and  that  man  William  Tyndale." 

The  New  Testament  was  the  work  to  which  he 
chiefly  devoted  himself,  bringing  out  edition  after  edi- 
tion as  he  saw  anything  to  be  improved.  Of  the  Old 
Testament  he  translated  only  the  Pentateuch,  the  His- 
torical Books,  and  part  of  the  Prophets. 

The  margin  contains  a  running  comment  on  the  text, 
and  some  of  the  notes  rather  amusingly  exhibit  his 
strong  anti-Papal  feeling.  He  has  a  grim  jest  in  the 
margin  of  Exod.  xxxii.  35,  "The  Pope's  bull  slayeth 
more  than  Aaron's  calf."  On  Lev.  xxi.  5  he  com- 
ments, "  Of  the  heathen  priests,  then,  our  prelates 
took  the  example  of  their  bald  pates;"  and  where  the 
account  is  given,  Exod.  xxxvi.  5,  &c.,  of  the  forbid- 
ding the  people  to  bring  any  more  offerings  for  the 
building  of  the  tabernacle,  he  has  this  note  on  the  mar- 
gin, "When  will  the  Pope  say  Hoo!  (hold!)  and  forbid 
an  offering  for  the  building  of  St.  Peter's  Church  ? 
And  when  will  our  spirituality  say  Hoo!  and  forbid 
to  give  them  more  land  ?  Never  until  they  have  all." 

Many  of  his  quaint  expressions  have  been  altered  in 
succeeding  versions,  not  always,  perhaps,  for  the  bet- 
ter. Here  are  a  few  as  specimens  taken  almost  en- 
tirely from  the  New  Testament : 

Gen.  xxxix.  2 — "And  the  Lorde  was  with  Joseph, 
and  he  was  a  luckie  felowe." 

Matt.  xxvi.  30 — "When  they  had  said  grace." 


100  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

Mark  vi.  27—"  He  sent  forthe  the  hangman." 
Rev.  i.  10 — "  I  was  in  the  Sprete  on  a  Sondaye." 
Matt,  xxvii.  62— "The  daye  that  foloweth  Good 

Fridaye." 

i  Cor.  xvi.  8— "I  will  tarry  at  Ephesus  til  Witson- 

tyde." 
Actsxiii.  15— "The  rulers  of  the  synagogue  sent  to 

them  after  the  lecture,  saying,  If  ye  have  any  sermon 

to  exhort  the  people,  say  on." 
Acts  xiv.  13— "Brought  oxen  and  garlandes  to  the 

churche  porche." 

i  Peter  v.  3— "Be  not  as  lordes  over  the  parrishes." 
Heb.  xii.   16— "Which  for  one  breakfast  sold  his 

birthright." 
Matt.  iv.  24 — "Holden  of  divers  diseases  and  grip- 

inges." 

Matt.  vi.  7 — "When  ye  pray,  bable  not  moche." 
Matt.  xv.  27 — "The  whelpes  eat  of  the  crommes." 
Mark  xii.  2 — "  He  sent  to  the  tenauntes  a  servant" 
Luke  xx.  9 — "  He  lett  it  forthe  to  fermers." 

The  following  passage  from  Luke  ii.  I  have  selected 
as  a  characteristic  specimen  of  Tyndale,  though  per- 
haps not  showing  as  well  as  other  passages  would  the 
resemblance  to  our  Authorized  Version.  Opposite  is 
printed  the  corresponding  portion  in  Wycliffe's  Testa- 
ment, to  show  the  growth  of  the  English  language  in 
the  meantime : 


TYNDALE'S  VERSION.  101 

Specimen  from  Wy cliff e. 
(LUKE  ii.  i-n.) 

forsotbe  it  was  Son  in  tbo  &a?est  a 
maunbement  went  out  fro  Caesar  Hugust 
tbat  al  tbe  worlfc  scbul&e  be  &fscru?e&, 
£bts  first  t>tscru\>in0e  was  maafc  of  C?n>ne 
iusttce  of  Cir^e,  an&  alle  men  voenten  tbat 
tbei  ecbulbe  mafte  profeeciounecb  b?  bim* 
eelf  in  to  bie  cite*  Sotbl?  anb  3oeepb 
ettgbe&e  up  fro  (Balilee  of  tbe  cite  of 
IRasaretb  in  to  3u&et  in  to  a  cite  of  Dauitb 
tbat  ie  clepit)  Be&ieem,  for  tbat  be  voae 
of  tbo  bouse  an&  me^ne  of  2>auitbt  tbat 
be  ecbul&e  fcnowlecbe  witb  flDarp  witb 
cbtlb  epouslfc  w?f  to  b?m» 

Sotbl?  it  was  fcon  wbanne  tbei  weren 
tbere  tbe  &a$es  weren  fuifilleb  tbat  sbe 
ecbuI5e  bere  cbilfc,  Hn5  ebe  cbil&i5e  ber 
firete  born  eone  anb  wlappi&e  b?m  in 
clotbis  a^  putte&  b$m  in  a  craccbe,  for 
tber  was  not  place  to  b?m  in  tbe  com^n 
stable* 


102  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

Specimen  from  Tyndale. 
(LUKE  ii.  i-n.) 

Dlt  folowed  in  tboose  frames  tbat  tbere 
wente  oute  acommaun&mentfromBuguste 
tbe  jempcrour  tbat  all  tbe  woorlde  sbulde 
be  valued  Cbis  tai^nge  \vae  first  exe- 
cuted wben  S?renu0  was  leftenaunt  in 
Sirta.  an&  ever?  man  voente  in  to 
bie  awne  ebire  toune  tbere  to  be  tarc&. 
Hn&  Joeepb  aleo  a0cen&e&  from  (Balile 
oute  of  a  cite  callefc  masaretb,  unto 
3ewr&  into  a  cite  of  Davit)  wbicb  i0 
called  £etbleemt  because  be  \vae  of  tbe 
boueee  ant)  linage  of  Davi£)f  to  be  tared 
witb  flDar?  bis  we&&eb  vo?fef  vobicb  was 
voitb  cbil&e*  an&  it  fortuned  vobile  tbep 
tbere  were  ber  tyrne  wa0  come  tbat  ebe 
ebulde  be  delivered*  Hn&  ebe  brought 
fortbe  ber  firet  begotten  eonne  an& 
wrapped  b?m  in  ewafc&tynge  clotbee,  and 
la?ed  b?m  in  a  manger  be  cause  tbere  was 
no  roume  for  tbem  witbin  in  tbe  boetrep. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  BIBLE  AFTER  TYNDALE'S  DAYS. 

§  I.    Three  Years  After.     §  2.    Twenty  Years  After. 
§  3.    Fifty  Years  More  gone  by. 

"  LORD,  open  the  King  of  England's  eyes! " 
Pity  that  William  Tyndale,  as  he  gasped  forth  his 
dying  prayer,  could  not  have  lifted  even  a  little  way 
the  veil  that  hid  from  him  the  future  of  England. 

§  i.    THREE  YEARS  AFTER. 

In  every  parish  church  stands  an  English  Bible, 
whose  frontispiece  alone  is  sufficient  to  tell  of  the 
marvelous  change  that  has  taken  place  in  the  mean- 
time. 

The  design  is  by  Holbein.  In  the  first  compartment 
the  Almighty  is  seen  in  the  clouds  with  outstretched 
arms.  Two  scrolls  proceed  out  of  His  mouth  to  the 
right  and  to  the  left.  On  the  former  is  the  phrase, 
"The  word  which  goeth  forth  from  me  shall  not  re- 
turn to  me  empty,  but  shall  accomplish  whatsoever  I 
will  have  done."  The  other  is  addressed  to  King 

103 


104  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

Henry,  who  is  kneeling  in  the  distance  bareheaded, 
with  his  crown  lying  at  his  feet — "  I  have  found  me  a 
man  after  mine  own  heart,  who  shall  fulfil  all  my 
will."  Henry  answers,  "Thy  word  is  a  lantern  unto 
my  feet." 

Immediately  below  is  the  King,  seated  on  his  throne, 
holding  in  each  hand  a  book,  on  which  is  written 
"The  Word  of  God."  This  he  is  giving  to  Cranmer 
and  another  bishop,  who,  with  a  group  of  priests,  are 
on  the  right  of  the  picture,  saying,  "Take  this  and 
teach;"  the  other,  on  the  opposite  side,  he  holds  out 
to  Cromwell  and  the  lay  peers,  and  the  words  are,  "I 
make  a  decree  that  in  all  my  kingdom  men  shall 
tremble  and  fear  before  the  Living  God;"  while  a 
third  scroll,  falling  downward  over  his  feet,  speaks 
alike  to  peer  and  prelate — "Judge  righteous  judgment; 
turn  not  away  your  ear  from  the  prayer  of  any  poor 
man." 

In  the  third  compartment  Cranmer  and  Cromwell 
are  distributing  the  Bibles  to  kneeling  priests  and  lay- 
men, and  at  the  bottom  a  preacher  with  a  benevolent 
and  beautiful  face  is  addressing  a  crowd  from  a  pulpit 
in  the  open  air.  He  is  apparently  commencing  his 
sermon  with  the  words,  "I  exhort,  therefore,  that  first 
of  all  supplications,  prayers,  thanksgivings,  be  made 
for  all  men,  for  kings" — and  at  the  word  "kings" 
the  people  are  shouting,  "Vivat  Rex!"  children  who 
know  no  Latin  lisping,  "God  save  the  King!"  while 


THE  BIBLE  AFTER  TYND ALE'S  DAYS.          105 

at  the  extreme  left  a  prisoner  at  a  jail  window  is  join- 
ing in  the  cry  of  delight  as  if  he  too  were  delivered 
from  a  worse  bondage.1 

This  was  the  so-called  "GREAT  BIBLE"  of  1539,  the 
first  English  "Authorized  Version." 

It  was  indeed  a  marked  change  that  had  passed  over 
England.  The  Reformation  was  gaining  ground  among 
clergy  and  laity,  Henry  had  openly  broken  with  the 
Pope,  and  there  seemed  no  disposition  anywhere  to 
oppose  the  desire  for  a  "  People's  Bible." 

But  the  opposition  to  William  Tyndale  still  remained. 
His  stern  uncompromising  attitude  toward  Papal  error 
had  made  him  many  enemies  in  Church  and  court 
His  works  had  already  been  publicly  condemned,  and 
the  men  who  had  condemned  him  and  pursued  him  to 
his  death  were  resolved  that  his  Bible  should  never  be 
the  Bible  of  England. 

Yet  this  "Great  Bible,"  the  Authorized  Version  of 
the  nation,  was  virtually  Tyndale's! 

This  is  how  it  came  about.  Already  in  these  three 
years  three  different  versions  had  appeared  in  England. 
In  1536,  the  very  year  after  Tyndale's  imprisonment, 
came  the  Bible2  of  Myles  Coverdale,  the  man  who  after  ' 

'  This  description  is  taken  from  Mr.  Froude's  History  of  England, 
where,  however,  the  frontispiece  is  erroneously  said  to  belong  to  an 
edition  of  the  Coverdale  Bible. 

*  Sometimes  called  the  "  Treacle  Bible,"  from  its  rendering  of  Jer. 
viii.  22,  "  fig  tbere  no  ttiaClC  in  <5UeaD  7  "  Here  are  some  other 
curious  expressions : — 

Gen.  viii.  1 1 — "  The  dove  bare  an  olive  leafe  in  her  nebbe." 


106  SOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

Tyndale  has  played  the  most  prominent  part  of  any  in 
the  history  of  the  English  Bible.  Coverdale  was  a  man 
of  very  different  stamp  from  his  great  predecessor.  He 
had  neither  his  ability  nor  strength  of  character,  nor 
was  he,  like  him,  fitted  by  a  lifelong  study  for  his  task 
as  a  translator,  and  the  difference  comes  markedly 
out  in  the  work  produced  by  each.  But  it  is  only 
fair  to  say,  too,  that  he  was  quite  conscious  of  his 
defects,  that  he  did  the  work  before  him  to  the 
best  of  his  ability,  "seeking  it  not,  neither  desiring 
it,"  but  feeling  that  his  country  needed  it  done,  and 
modestly  regretting  that  no  better  man  was  there  to 
do  it. 

His  Bible  makes  no  pretence  to  be  an  original  trans- 
lation; it  is  "translated  out  of  Douche  and  Latin  into 
English,"  with  the  help  of  "five  sundry  interpreters" 
(i.  e.t  translators),  and  the  chief  of  these  "  interpreters  " 
is  evidently  William  Tyndale,  whom,  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament especially,  he  closely  follows. 


Joshua  ii.  n — "Our  heart  had  fayled  us,  neither  is  there  good 

stomacke  in  any  manne." 
Judges  ix.  53 — "  And  brake  his  brain-panne." 
Job  v.  7 — "  It  is  man  that  is  born  to  misery  like  as  a  byrd  for  to 

flee." 
Acts  xi.  8 — "Ther  widowes  were  not  looked  vpon  in  the  daylie 

handreaching." 

In  original  edition  Queen  Anne  is  referred  to  as  the  king's  "  dear- 
est juste  wyfe  and  most  virtuous  princesse."  A  copy  now  in  the  British 
Museum  has  this  inscription,  but  "  Ane  "  is  changed  to  Jane,  thus 
JAne.  The  other  copies  have,  some  Ane,  some  Jane,  while  some 
actually  leave  the  space  blank,  as  if  the  editor  were  unable  to  keep 
pace  with  Henry's  rapid  change  of  wives. 


THE  BIBLE  AFTER   TYND ALE'S  DAYS.  107 

The  following  year  (1537)  appeared  "Matthews' 
Bible/'1  which  was  really  prepared  by  John  Rogers, 
one  of  the  early  Reformers,  afterward  martyred  in 
Queen  Mary's  reign.  His  known  opinions  and  his 
connection  with  Tyndale  accounts  for  the  suppression 
of  his  real  name  as  likely  to  injure  the  circulation  of 
the  book.  This  work  was  Tyndale's  translation  pure 
and  simple,  all  but  the  latter  half  of  the  Old  Testament 
(which  is  taken,  with  some  alteration,  from  Cover- 
dale's  Bible) ;  and  one  feels  pleased  for  the  old  exile's 
sake,  though  his  honor  was  given  to  others,  that  Arch- 
bishop Cranmer  should  "like  it  better  than  any  trans- 
lation heretofore  made,"  he  "would  rather  see  it 
licensed  by  the  king  than  receive  ^1,000,"  and  "if 
they  waited  till  the  bishops  should  set  forth  a  better 
translation  they  would  wait,"  he  thinks,  "till  the  day 
after  doomsday."  2  It  is  not  easy  to  understand  how 
it  escaped  detection  as  the  work  of  Tyndale,  especially 
as  it  contained  those  strong  anti-Papal  notes  by  which 
Tyndale's  version  gave  such  offence. 
Shortly  after  appeared  "  Taverner's  Bible/'  *  which 


i  In  it  the  Song  of  Solomon  is  entitled  "  SOlOtT10nf0 

*  "  Cranmer's  Remains  and  Letters,"  p.  344.     Parker  Society. 

*  Little  is  known  of  him.     The  description  in  Fuller's  "  Church 
History,"  chap.  ii.  p.  459,  is  certainly  not  nattering — «  Surely  preach- 
ing must  have  run  very  low  if  it  be  true  what  I  read  that  Mr.  Taver- 
nour  of  Water  Eaton,  in  Oxfordshire,  gave  the  scholars  a  sermon  at 
St.  Mary's  with  his  gold  chain  about  his  neck  and  his  sword  by  his 
side,  beginning  with  these   words, « Arriving  at  Mount  St.  Mary's,  in 
the  stony  stage  where  I  now  stand,  I  have  brought  you  some  fine 


108  HOW   WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

was  little  more  than  an  edition  of  Matthews'  with 
its  more  violent  polemical  notes  toned  down  or 
omitted. 

None  of  these  versions  were  satisfactory.  Cover- 
dale's  was  but  a  second-hand  translation,  and  Mat- 
thews' was  only  in  part  derived  from  the  originals,  be- 
sides which  the  controversial  notes  were  against  its 
success. 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  the  Great  Bible  was  set  on 
foot.  Cranmer  and  some  of  the  chief  advisers  of  the 
king  had  set  their  hearts  on  having  a  translation  that 
would  be  really  worthy  of  its  position  as  a  National 
Bible.  Myles  Coverdale  was  selected  to  take  charge  of 
the  work,  and  he  proceeded  to  Paris  with  the  king's 
printer,  that  the  book  might  be  brought  out  in  the  best 
possible  style.  But  the  Inquisitor-General  got  notice 
of  the  project,  and  the  result  was  a  repetition  of  the 
episode  of  Tyndale  at  Cologne,  only  that  Coverdale 
fared  better  than  his  great  predecessor,  for  though  his 
Bibles  were  all  seized  by  the  "  Lieutenant  Criminall," 
he  carried  off  the  printing-press,  the  types,  and  the 
printers  themselves  to  complete  the  work  in  England. 
It  was  published  in  April,  1539,  and  was  "authorized 
to  be  used  and  frequented  in  every  church  in  the  king- 
dom." !  The  reader  who  wants  a  specimen  of  its  style 

biscuits  baked  in  the  oven  of  charity  and  carefully  conserved  for  the 
chickens  of  the  Church,  the  sparrows  of  the  Spirit,  the  sweet  swallows 
of  salvation.'  " 

>  When  Henry  was  asked  to  authorize  it,  "  Well,"  said  he,  "  but  are 


THE  BIBLE  AFTER   TYNDALE'S  DAYS.  109 

has  but  to  turn  to  the  Psalms  in  his  Prayer-Book  or 
the  "  Comfortable  Words  "  in  the  Communion  Service, 
which  are  taken  unchanged  from  the  Great  Bible.  It 
has  another  point  of  interest  in  connection  with  the 
Revised  Version.  It  indicated  some  texts  as  doubtful 
by  printing  them  in  small  type,  and  among  them  was 
the  celebrated  passage  i  John  v.  7,  8,  which  the  recent 
revisers  have  omitted  altogether. 

But  more  important  to  notice  is  the  fact  that  the 
book  is  really  no  new  translation.  It  may  be  described 
as  a  compilation  from  Matthews'  and  Coverdale's  Bibles 
— or  better  still,  perhaps,  with  a  recent  writer,  *  as  a 
revision  of  Matthews'  by  Coverdale;  and  since,  as  we 
have  seen,  Matthews'  was  almost  entirely  Tyndale's 
version,  the  Great  Bible  was  really  little  more  than  a 
revised  edition  of  Tyndale! 

Thus  had  the  old  martyr  triumphed.  Only  three 
years  since  these  men  had  brought  him  to  his  death, 
and  here  was  his  Bible  in  their  midst,  though  they 
knew  it  not,  authorized  by  the  king,  commended  by 
the  clergy,  and  placed  in  the  parish  churches  for  the 
teaching  of  the  people!  And  as  if  to  mark  the  change 
with  all  the  emphasis  that  was  possible,  an  inscription 
on  the  title-page  told  that  "  it  was  oversene  and  pe- 
rused at  the  commandement  of  the  King's  Highness  by 

there  any  heresies  maintained  thereby  ?  "     They  answered  that  there 
were  no  heresies  that  they  could   find  maintained  in  it.     "  Then  in 
God's  name,"  said  the  king,  "  let  it  go  forth  among  our  people." 
»  Dr.  Mombert,  "  English  Versions," 


110  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

the  ryghte  reverende  fathers  in  God,  Cuthbert  bishop 
of  Duresme  (Durham),  and  Nicholas  bishop  of  Roches- 
ter. "  Who,  think  you,  reader,  was  Cuthbert  of  Du- 
resme ?  None  other  than  Cuthbert  Tonstal,  his  untir- 
ing opponent,  the  bishop  who  had  turned  him  dis- 
couraged from  his  door,  who  had  bargained  with  Pak- 
ington  to  purchase  the  Bibles,  who  had  hurled  into  the 
flames  from  the  pulpit  of  Paul's  Cross  the  translation 
which  now  went  forth  bearing  his  name! 

§  2.    TWENTY  YEARS  AFTER. 

It  is  the  day  of  Elizabeth's  entry  into  London,  and 
the  streets  are  bright  with  waving  banners  and  gay 
dresses  of  the  citizens  struggling  to  get  closer  to  the 
royal  procession,  and  shouting  with  joy  as  they  behold 
their  young  queen.  There  is  more  in  those  shouts 
than  the  mere  gaiety  of  a  holiday  crowd.  It  is  a  glad 
day  for  many  in  England.  The  dark  reign  of  Mary  is 
over,  with  its  imprisonments  and  martyrdoms,  and  the 
men  of  the  Reformation  are  looking  forward  hopefully 
to  the  future.  There  are  those  in  that  crowd  who  have 
lived  for  years  in  constant  dread — there  are  those  who 
have  had  to  fly  for  their  lives,  some  of  them  com- 
panions of  the  exiles  at  Geneva,  waiting  to  send 
word  to  their  comrades  abroad  how  it  should  fare  in 
England. 

Now  the  shouting  has  ceased.  There  is  a  pause  in 
the  long  line  of  banners  and  plumes  and  glittering 


THE  BIBLE  AFTER   TYND ALE'S  DAYS.  Ill 

steel.  The  procession  has  just  arrived  at  "the  little 
Conduit  in  Chepe,"  where  one  of  those  pageants,  the 
delight  of  our  forefathers,  is  prepared.  An  old  man 
in  emblematic  dress  stands  forth  before  the  queen,  and 
it  is  told  Her  Grace  that  this  is  Time.  "  Time,"  quoth 
she,  "and  Time  it  was  that  brought  me  hither." 
Beside  him  stands  a  white-robed  maiden,  who  is  in- 
troduced as  "Truth,  the  daughter  of  Time."  She 
holds  in  her  hand  a  book  on  which  is  written, 
"  Verbum  verttatis,"  the  Word  of  truth,  an  English 
Bible,  which  she  presents  to  the  queen.  Raising  it 
with  both  her  hands,  Elizabeth  presses  it  to  her  lips, 
and  then  laying  it  against  her  heart,  amid  the  en- 
thusiastic shouting  of  the  multitude,  she  gracefully 
thanks  the  city  for  so  precious  a  gift. 

It  was  a  good  omen  for  the  future  of  the  Bible, 
which  had  been  almost  a  closed  book  in  the  preceding 
reign.  And  within  three  months  it  was  followed  by 
one  still  more  significant.  The  Reformers  who  had 
fled  to  Geneva  returned  to  their  homes,  bearing  with 
them  a  new  version  of  the  Bible,  the  work  of  the  best 
years  of  their  banishment,1  and  the  dedication  of  the 
book  was  accepted  by  Elizabeth. 

This  was  the  first  appearance  in  England  of  the 
famous  Geneva  Bible,  the  "  Breeches  Bible,"  as  it  was 
afterward  called,  from  its  rendering  of  Genesis  iii.  7, 
where  Adam  and  Eve  "sewed  fig-tree  leaves  together, 

1  Myles  Coverdale  was  one  of  them. 


112  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

and  made  themselves  breeches."1  It  was  the  most 
popular  Bible  that  had  ever  appeared  in  England,  and 
for  sixty  years  it  held  its  own  against  all  rivals,  for  a 
time  contesting  the  ground  even  with  our  own  Author- 
ized Version. 

It  was  both  cheaper  and  less  cumbrous  than  the 
"  Great  Bible  "  of  Cranmer,  as  well  as  being  a  much 
more  careful  and  accurate  work,  though,  like  most  of 
its  predecessors,  it  was  more  a  revision  than  a  trans- 
lation, being  chiefly  based  on  Tyndale.  It  contained, 
marginal  notes,  which  were  considered  very  helpful  in 
dealing  with  obscure  passages  of  Scripture,8  though,  as 
might  be  expected  from  Geneva,  of  a  strongly  Calvin- 
istic  bias.  These  notes  should  possess  a  special  in- 
terest for  us,  for,  as  we  shall  see  afterward,  we  have 
partly  to  thank  them  for  our  Authorized  Version  of 
to-day. 

Some  other  of  its  peculiarities  are  worth  notice.  It 
was  the  first  Bible  that  laid  aside  the  old  black  letter 
for  the  present  Roman  type.  It  was  also  the  first  to 
recognize  the  divisions  into  verses,  and  the  first  to 
omit  the  Apocrypha.  It  omits  the  name  of  St.  Pairf 

i  It  was  really  only  one  edition  published  by  Barker  that  contained 
this  reading,  which  was  also  the  reading  of  Wyclifie's  Bible. 

«  I  do  not  know  if  the  note  on  Rev.  ix.  3  would  be  thus  classedl 
The  "  locusts  that  came  out  of  the  bottomless  pit "  are  explained  as 
meaning  "  false  teachers,  heretics,  and  worldly  subtil  prelates,  with 
Monks,  Friars,  Cardinals,  Patriarchs,  Archbishops,  Bishops,  Doctors. 
Bachelors  and  Masters  of  Artes,  which  forsake  Christ  to  maintain  fals* 
doctrine." 


THE  BIBLE  AFTER   TYND ALE'S  DAYS.  113 

from  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  it  uses  italics  for 
all  words  not  occurring  in  the  original. 

The  history  of  the  dark  troublous  days  of  opposition 
to  the  Bible  and  persecution  to  its  promoters  ceases 
forever  (let  us  hope)  with  the  issue  of  the  Geneva 
Bible. 

§  3.    FIFTY  YEARS  MORE  GONE  BY. 

How  Tyndale's  heart  would  have  swelled  at  the 
sight!  A  king  of  England  himself  is  directing  an 
English  Bible  translation ! 

In  January,  1604,  a  conference  of  bishops  and  clergy 
had  been  held  in  the  drawing-rooms  of  Hampton  Court 
Palace,  under  the  presidency  of  King  James  himself,  to 
consider  certain  alleged  grievances  of  the  Puritan 
party  in  the  Church,  and  among  other  subjects  of  dis- 
cussion was  rather  unexpectedly  brought  up  that  of 
the  defectiveness  of  the  two  current  translations  of 
Scripture. 


114 


HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

Specimens. 


230 
COVERDALE'S,  1535. 

Gbe  Xorde  10  mg  sbepberde 
f  can  want  notbfng.  f)e 
fedetb  me  in  a  greene  pas* 
turc  and  ledetb  me  to  a  f  reeb 
water.  1be  quicfcenetb  nig 
0oule  and  bringetb  me  tottb 
in  tbe  wage  of  rfgbteeous* 
nc00  tor  bid  names  sake. 
Gbouflb  1F  sbulde  walfce  now 
in  tbe  valley  ot  tbe  sbadowe 
ot  deatb  get  1T  feare  no  euell 
tor  tbou  are  witb  me,  tbg 
staffe  and  tbg  sbepebohe 
comforte  me. 

^Tbou  preparest  a  table 
betore  a0a^nst  mine  ene* 
mies  tbou  anogntest  m^ 
beaoe  witb  ogle  anD  fullest 
tm?  cuppe  full,  ©b  let  tbc 
louinfl^hgnones  and  mercg 
folowe  me  all  tbe  dages  off 
mg  Isfe  tbat  f  rnaije  dwell 
in  tbe  bouse  otf  tbe  Xoro 
for  euer. 


PSALM. 

GREAT  BIBLE,  1539. 

Gbe  Xorde  is  mg  ebepberde 
tberefore  can  fl  lacfte  notb* 
ing.  t)e  sbal  fede  me  in  a 
drene  pasture  and  leade  me 
fortb  besgde  ^  watirs  of 
coforte.  l>e  ebal  conuert 
mg  soulc  and  bring  me  fortb 
in  VK  patbes  of  rigbteousnes 
for  bis  names  safte.  ]I?ea 
tbouab  1T  walfte  tborowe  ^ 
valle^e  of  ve  sbadowe  of 
deatb  H  \vyl  fear  no  euell 
for  tbou  art  w/  me :  tb£  rod 
and  tbg  staffe  comfort  me. 
^bou  sbalt  prepare  a  table 
before  me  agagnst  tbem 
tbat  trouble  me:  tbou  bas 
anointed  mu  bead  w/  ogle 
and  mg  cup  sbal  be  ful. 
JTnit  louino  h\?ndncs  and 
mercg  sbal  folowe  me  all 
tbe  dages  of  mg  Igfe  and 
H  wgll  dwel  in  v  bouse  of 
B'  Xorde  for  euer. 


England  had  at  that  time  three  different  versions.    The 
Genevan  was  the  favorite  of  the  people  in  general;  a 


THE  BILLE  AFTER   TYND ALE'S  DAYS. 


115 


/ival  version,  called  the  Bishops'  Bible,  which  had  been 
brought  out  some  eight  years  after,  was  supported 

Specimens. 

230  PSALM. 
GENEVAN  BIBLE,  1560.  BISHOPS'  BIBLE,  1568. 


1.  The  Lord  is  my  shepheard 
I  shall  not  want. 

2.  Hee  maketh  mee  to  rest  in 
greene  pasture  and  leadeth  mee 
by  the  still  waters. 

3.  He  restoreth  my  soule  and 
leadeth     me     in     the    paths    of 
righteousnesse    for    His    Names 
sake. 

4.  Ye  though  I  walk  through 
the  valley  of  the  shadowe  of  death 
I  will  feare  no  euill  for  thou  art 
with    me:    thy    rodde    and    thy 
staffe  they  comfort  me. 

5.  Thou  doest  prepare  a  table 
before   me   in   the  sight  of  mine 
adversaries;     thou     dost    anoynt 
mine  head  with  oyle  and -my  cup 
runneth  over. 

6.  Doubtlesse    kindnesse   and 
mercy   shall   follow   mee   all  the 
dayes    of   my    life    and    I    shal 
remaine    a    long   season    in    the 
house  of  the  Lord. 


1.  God     is     my    shephearde 
therefore   I   can   lacke   nothyng: 
he  wyll  cause  me  to  repose  my- 
selfe  in  pasture  full  of  grasse  and 
he    wyll    leade   me   vnto   calme 
waters. 

2.  He  will  conuert  my  soule ; 
he  wyll  bring  me  foorth  into  the 
pathes  of  righteousnesse   for  his 
names  sake. 

3.  Yea  though  I  walke  through 
the    valley    of   the    shadowe    of 
death  I  wyll  fear  no  euyll;  for 
thou  art  with  me,  thy  rodde  and 
thy  staffe  be  the  thynges  that  do 
comfort  me. 

4.  Thou  wilt  prepare  a  table 
before    me    in    the    presence   of 
myne     aduersaries;     thou      has 
anoynted  my  head  with  oyle  and 
my  cup  shalbe  brymme  ful. 

5.  Truly   felicitie   and  mercy 
shal  folowe  me  all  the  dayes  of 
my  lyfe  :  and    I   wyll  dwell  in 
the    house    of   God    for   a  long 
tyme. 


by  ecclesiastical  authority;  while  the  "Great  Bible"  of 
Henry  VIII.  might  still  be  seen  chained  to  a  stone  or 


116  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

wooden  desk  in  many  of  the  country  churches.  But 
none  of  these  was  likely  to  be  accepted  as  the  Bible 
of  the  English  nation.  The  Great  Bible  was  antiquated 
and  cumbersome,  the  Genevan,  though  a  careful 
translation  and  convenient  for  general  use,  had  be- 
come, through  the  Puritan  character  of  its  notes,  quite 
the  Bible  of  a  party;  while  the  Bishops'  Version,  a 
very  inferior  production,  neither  commanded  the  re- 
spect of  scholars  nor  suited  the  wants  of  the  people. 

There  was,  therefore,  plainly  a  need  for  a  new 
version,  which,  being  accepted  by  all,  should  form  a 
bond  of  union  between  different  classes  and  rival  re- 
ligious communities.  Yet  when  Dr.  Reynolds,  the 
leader  of  the  Puritan  party,  put  forward  such  a  pro- 
posal at  the  Conference,  it  was  very  coldly  received, 
Bancroft,  bishop  of  London,  seeming  to  express  the 
general  feeling  of  his  party  when  he  grumbled  that 
"if  every  man  had  his  humor  about  new  versions, 
there  would  be  no  end  of  translating."  Probably  the 
fact  of  the  proposal  having  come  from  the  Puritans 
had  also  some  effect  on  this  conservatism  of  the 
bishops;  in  any  case  it  seemed  that  the  project  must 
fall  through  for  want  of  their  support. 

But  if  the  bishops  in  the  palace  drawing-room  that 
day  thought  so,  they  soon  found  that  they  had  literally 
"calculated  without  their  host."  There  was  one  man 
in  that  assembly  who  looked  with  special  favor  on  the 
new  proposal,  and  that  man  was  the  royal  pedant 


THE  BIBLE  AFTER  TYND ALE'S  DAYS.          117 

who  presided.  A  Bible  translation  made  under  his 
auspices  would  greatly  add  to  the  glory  of  his  reign, 
besides  which,  to  a  man  whose  learning  was  really  ; 
considerable,  and  who  was  specially  fond  of  display- 
ing it  in  theological  matters,  the  direction  of  such  a 
work  would  be  very  congenial.  And  if  a  further 
motive  were  needed,  it  was  easily  found  in  his  uncon- 
cealed dislike  to  the  popular  Geneva  Bible.  The 
whole  tone  of  its  politics  and  theology,  as  exhibited 
in  the  marginal  notes,  was  utterly  distasteful  to  James, 
as  he  plainly  showed  soon  after  in  his  directions  to 
the  new  translators,  for  "marry  withal,  he  gave  this 
caveat,  that  no  notes  should  be  added,  having  found 
in  those  which  were  annexed  to  the  Geneva  trans- 
lation some  notes  very  partial,  untrue,  seditious,  and 
savoring  too  much  of  dangerous  and  traitorous  con- 
ceits." 

Two  of  these  notes  especially  vexed  him.  In  2 
Chron.  xv.  16  it  is  recorded  that  Asa  "removed  his 
mother  from  being  queen,  because  she  had  made  an 
idol  in  a  grove  " ;  and  the  margin  contains  this  com- 
ment, "Herein  he  showed  that  he  lacked  zeal,  for  she 
ought  to  have  died,"  a  remark  probably  often  remem- 
bered by  the  fanatics  of  the  day  in  reference  to  the 
death  of  James's  mother,  the  Queen  of  Scots.  There 
was  another  which  rather  amusingly  clashed  with  the 
grand  Stuart  theories  of  the  divine  right  of  kings  to  be 
above  all  law  and  to  command  implicit  obedience 


118  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

from  their  subjects.  In  the  passage  in  the  first  chapter 
of  Exodus  describing  the  conduct  of  the  Hebrew  mid- 
wives,  who  "did  not  as  the  king  of  Egypt  com- 
manded, but  saved  the  men-children  alive,"  the  margin 
declares  "their  disobedience  to  the  king  was  lawful, 
though  their  dissembling  was  evil."  "It  is  false," 
cried  the  indignant  advocate  of  kingly  right;  "to 
disobey  a  king  is  not  lawful ;  such  traitorous  conceits 
should  not  go  forth  among  the  people." 

But,  however  men  may  smile  at  the  absurdities  of 
James,  which  in  some  measure  led  to  the  new  trans- 
lation, there  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  wisdom 
shown  in  his  arrangements  for  carrying  out  the  work. 
Fifty-four  learned  men  were  selected  impartially  from 
High  Churchmen  and  Puritans,  as  well  as  from  those 
who,  like  Saville  and  Boys,  represented  scholarship 
totally  unconnected  with  any  party.  And  in  addition 
to  this  band  of  appointed  revisers,  the  king  also  de- 
signed to  secure  the  cooperation  of  every  Biblical 
scholar  of  note  in  the  kingdom.  The  Vice-Chancellor 
of  Cambridge  was  desired  to  name  any  fit  man  with 
whom  he  was  acquainted,  and  Bishop  Bancroft  re- 
ceived a  letter  from  the  king  himself,  directing  him  to 
"move  the  bishops  to  inform  themselves  of  all  such 
learned  men  within  their  several  dioceses  as,  having 
especial  skill  in  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  tongues,  have 
taken  pains  in  their  private  studies  of  the  Scriptures  for 
the  clearing  of  any  obscurities  either  in  the  Hebrew 


THE  mnLE  AFTER  TYND  ALE'S  DAYS.  119 


or  the  Greek,  or  touching  any  difficulties  or  mistakings 
in  the  former  English  translations,  which  we  have  now 
commanded  to  be  thoroughly  viewed  and  amended,  and 
thereupon  to  earnestly  charge  them,  signifying  our 
pleasure  therein,  that  they  send  such  their  observa- 
tions to  Mr.  Lively,  our  Hebrew  reader  in  Cambridge, 
or  to  Dr.  Harding,  our  Hebrew  reader  in  Oxford,  or  to 
Dr.  Andrews,  Dean  of  Westminster,  to  be  imparted  to 
the  rest  of  their  several  companies,  that  so  our  said 
intended  translation  may  have  the  help  and  further- 
ance of  all  our  principal  learned  men  within  this  our 
kingdom." 

An  admirable  set  of  rules  was  drawn  up  for  the 
instruction  of  the  revisers,  directing  amongst  other 
things  that  the  Bishops'  Bible  should  be  used  as  a 
basis,  and  departed  from  only  when  the  text  required 
it;  that  any  competent  scholars  might  be  consulted 
about  special  difficulties;  that  differences  of  opinion 
should  be  settled  at  a  general  meeting;  that  divisions 
of  chapters  should  be  as  little  changed  as  possible,  and 
marginal  references  should  be  given  from  one  scripture 
to  another;  and  last,  but  by  no  means  least,  that  there 
should  be  no  marginal  notes,  except  for  the  explana- 
tion of  Hebrew  and  Greek  words.  This  simple  rule 
did  probably  more  than  anything  else  to  make  our 
Authorized  Version  the  Bible  of  all  classes  in  England, 
binding  us  together  as  a  Protestant  nation  by  a  tie 
which  the  strife  of  parties  and  the  war  of  politics  has 


120  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

since  been  insufficient  to  sever.  Had  the  opposite 
course  been  adopted,  we  should  now  have  probably 
the  Bibles  of  different  religious  parties  competing  in 
unseemly  rivalry,  each  reflecting  the  theological  bias 
of  the  party  from  which  it  came. 

Never  before  had  such  labor  and  care  been  ex- 
pended on  the  English  Bible.  The  revisers  were 
divided  into  six  companies,  each  of  which  took  its  own 
portion,  and  every  aid  accessible  was  used  to  make 
their  work  a  thorough  success.  They  carefully  studied 
the  Greek  and  Hebrew;  they  used  the  best  commen- 
taries of  European  scholars;  the  Bibles  in  Spanish, 
Italian,  French,  and  German  were  examined  for  any 
help  they  might  afford  in  arriving  at  the  exact  sense 
of  each  passage;  and  when  the  sense  was  found,  no 
pains  were  spared  to  express  it  in  clear,  vigorous, 
idiomatic  English.  All  the  excellences  of  the  previous 
versions  were  noted,  for  the  purpose  of  incorporating 
them  in  the  work,  and  even  the  Rhemish  (Roman 
Catholic)  translation  was  laid  under  contribution  for 
some  expressive  phrases  which  it  contained.  "  Neither," 
says  Dr.  Miles  Smith,  in  the  preface,  "did  we  disdain 
to  revise  that  which  we  had  done,  and  to  bring  back 
to  the  anvil  that  which  we  had  hammered,  fearing  no 
reproach  for  slowness  nor  coveting  praise  for  expedi- 
tion;" and  the  result  was  the  production  of  this 
splendid  Authorized  Version  of  which  Englishmen  to- 
day are  so  justly  proud. 


THE  BIBLE  AFTER   TYND ALE'S  DAYS.  121 

For  more  than  two  centuries  English  Protestant 
writers  have  spoken  of  it  in  terms  of  almost  unani- 
mous praise— its  " grace  and  dignity,"  its  "flowing 
words,"  its  "masterly  English  style."  Even  a  Roman 
Catholic  divine,  Dr.  Geddes  (1786),  declares  that  "if 
accuracy  and  strictest  attention  to  the  letter  of  the 
text  be  supposed  to  constitute  an  excellent  version, 
this  is  of  all  versions  the  most  excellent."  And  an 
almost  touching  tribute  is  paid  it  by  one  who  evi- 
dently looked  back  on  it  with  yearning  regret,  after 
having  exchanged  its  beauties  for  the  uncouthness  of 
the  Romanist  versions.  "  Who  will  say,"  writes  Father 
Faber,  "that  the  uncommon  beauty  and  marvellous 
English  of  the  Protestant  Bible  is  not  one  of  the 
great  strongholds  of  heresy  in  this  country  ?  It  lives 
on  the  ear  like  a  music  that  can  never  be  forgotten, 
like  the  sound  of  church  bells,  which  the  convert 
scarcely  knows  how  he  can  forego.  Its  felicities  seem 
often  to  be  almost  things  rather  than  words.  It  is 
part  of  the  national  mind,  and  the  anchor  of  the  na- 
tional seriousness.  Nay,  it  is  worshipped  with  a  pos- 
itive idolatry,  in  extenuation  of  whose  fanaticism  its 
intrinsic  beauty  pleads  availingly  with  the  scholar. 
The  memory  of  the  dead  passes  into  it.  The  potent 
traditions  of  childhood  are  stereotyped  in  its  verses. 
It  is  the  representative  of  a  man's  best  moments;  all 
that  there  has  been  about  him  of  soft,  and  gentle,  and 
pure,  and  penitent,  and  good  speaks  to  him  forever 


122  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

out  of  his  English  Bible.  It  is  his  sacred  thing, 
which  doubt  never  dimmed  and  controversy  never 
soiled;  and  in  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land  there 
is  not  a  Protestant  with  one  spark  of  religiousness 
about  him  whose  spiritual  biography  is  not  in  his 
Saxon  Bible." 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  REVISED  VERSION. 

§  I.  Preparation  for  Revision.  $  2.  The  Jerusalem  Chamber, 
g  3.  The  Revisers  at  Work,  g  4.  Claims  of  the  Revised 
Bible,  g  5.  Will  it  Disturb  Men's  Faith?  §  6.  General  Re- 
marks— Conclusion. 

WHILE  fully  appreciating  the  beauty  and  excellence 
of  his  Authorized  Version,  the  reader  who  has  thus  far 
followed  this  little  sketch  will  scarcely  require  now  to 
ask,  Why  should  we  have  needed  a  new  revision  ? 

He  will  have  seen  that  the  whole  history  of  the  Eng- 
lish Bible  from  Tyndale's  days  is  a  history  of  growth 
and  improvement  by  means  of  repeated  revisions. 
Tyndale's  first  New  Testament  (1525)  was  revised  by 
himself  in  1534,  and  again  in  1535.  In  Matthews' 
Bible  it  appeared  still  more  improved  in  1537.  The 
Great  Bible  (1539)  was  the  result  of  a  further  revision, 
which  was  repeated  again  in  the  Genevan  (1560),  the 
Bishops'  (1568),  and  still  more  thoroughly  in  our 
splendid  Authorized  Version  (1611),  which  latter  is 
itself  one  of  the  best  proofs  of  the  value  of  Bible  re- 
vision. 

He  will .  have  seen  also  (to  recapitulate  here  for 

greater  clearness) — (i.)  that  in  the  present  day  we  have 

123 


124  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

access  to  a  treasury  of  ancient  manuscripts,  versions, 
and  quotations  such  as  the  scholars  of  King  James's 
day  had  never  dreamed  of;  (2.)  that  the  science  of 
textual  criticism,  which  teaches  the  value  and  the  best 
methods  of  dealing  with  these  documents,  has  entirely 
sprung  up  since;  (3.)  that  our  scholars  are  better  ac- 
quainted with  the  Sacred  Languages,  and  able  to  dis- 
tinguish delicate  shades  of  meaning  which  were  quite 
lost  on  their  predecessors;  and  (4.)  lastly,  that  owing 
to  the  natural  growth  of  the  English  language  itself 
many  words  in  the  Authorized  Version  have  become 
obsolete,  and  several  have  completely  changed  their 
meaning  during  the  past  300  years. 

And  thus  the  duty  is  laid  upon  our  Biblical  scholars 
which  Tyndale  in  his  first  preface  imposed  on  those  of 
his  own  day,  "that  if  they  perceive  in  any  place  that 
the  version  has  not  attained  unto  the  very  sense  of  the 
tongue  or  the  very  meaning  of  Scripture,  or  have  not 
given  the  right  English  word,  that  they  should  put  to 
their  hands  and  amend  it,  remembering  that  so  is  theil 
duty  to  do.'1 

About  the  beginning  of  the  present  century  the  ap- 
pearance of  several  partial  revisions  by  private  indi- 
viduals indicated  the  feeling  in  the  minds  of  scholars 
that  the  time  for  a  new  Bible  Revision  was  at  hand. 
As  years  went  on  the  feeling  grew  stronger,  and  lead- 
ing men  in  the  Church  were  pleading  that  the  work 


THE  REVISED    VERSION.  125 

should  not  be  long  delayed.  During  the  past  250 
years,  they  urged,  great  stores  of  Biblical  information 
have  been  accumulating;1  our  ability  to  use  such  in- 
formation has  been  greatly  increased  ;  and  it  is  of  im- 
portance to  the  interests  of  religion  that  that  informa- 
tion should  be  fully  disseminated  by  a  careful  correc- 
tion of  our  received  Scriptures.  Dr.  Tischendorf's  dis- 
covery at  Mount  Sinai  still  further  intensified  this  feel- 
ing; and  so  it  created  little  surprise  when,  on  the  loth 
February,  1870,  Bishop  Wilberforce  rose  in  the  Upper 
House  of  the  Southern  Convocation  to  propose, 
"That  a  committee  of  both  Houses  be  appointed,  with 
power  to  confer  with  any  committee  that  may  be  ap- 
pointed by  the  Convocation  of  the  Northern  Province, 
to  report  on  the  desirableness  of  a  revision  of  the 
Authorized  Version  of  the  New  Testament,  whether 
by  marginal  notes  or  otherwise,  in  all  those  passages 
where  plain  and  clear  errors,  whether  in  the  Greek 

i  Fully  200  years  ago  the  way  began  to  be  prepared  for  our  present 
revision  by  several  criticisms  and  attempts  at  correction  of  the  Au- 
thorized Version.  It  soon  became  clear,  however,  that  such  attempts 
were  premature  in  the  then  state  of  information  as  to  the  Original 
Scriptures,  and  scholars  began  to  direct  their  attention  rather  to  the 
laying  of  the  foundation  for  a  revision  in  the  future  by  collecting  and 
examining  Greek  and  Hebrew  manuscripts,  together  with  the  various 
early  versions  and  quotations  from  the  Fathers.  Toward  the  close  of 
the  eighteenth  century  Kennicott  and  De  Rossi  had  published  the  re- 
sults of  their  examination  of  several  hundred  Hebrew  manuscripts; 
and  in  more  recent  times  the  same  service  was  rendered  to  the  Greek 
by  Drs.  Tischendorf,  Tregelles,  Scrivener,  and  others,  whose  way  had 
been  prepared  by  many  distinguished  predecessors.  Besides,  there 
was  the  work  of  a  long  series  of  commentators  in  investigating  the 
meaning  of  the  Sacred  Writers,  so  that,  on  the  whole,  a  very  valuable 
foundation  for  revision  existed  by  the  middle  of  the  present  century. 


126  HOW  WE  GOT  OUE  BIBLE. 

text  adopted  by  the  translators,  or  in  the  translation 
made  from  the  same,  shall  on  due  investigation  be 
found  to  exist."  After  the  enlarging  of  this  resolution 
so  as  to  include  the  Old  Testament  also,  it  was  adopted 
by  both  Houses. 

§  2.  Four  months  later,  on  a  bright  summer  day 
toward  the  close  of  June,  1870,  a  distinguished  com- 
pany was  assembled  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber  in 
Westminster  Abbey. 

In  that  room  in  days  long  gone  by  the  first  of  the 
Lancastrian  kings  breathed  out  his  weary  life.  Beneath 
those  windows  sat  the  "  Assembly  of  Divines"  when 
the  ill-fated  Charles  ruled  in  England ;  here  the  West- 
minster Confession  was  drawn  up;  and  here  too,  under 
the  auspices  of  William  of  Orange,  was  discussed  the 
great  Prayer-Book  Revision  of  1689,  intended  to  join 
together  Churchmen  and  Dissenters. 

But  no  memory  of  that  ancient  chamber  will  eclipse 
in  the  future  that  of  the  work  for  which  these  men 
were  assembled  on  that  summer  afternoon,  for  the 
Bible  Revision  had  at  length  been  begun,  and  this  was 
the  appointed  New  Testament  Company. 

At  the  centre  of  the  long  table  sat  the  chairman, 
Bishop  Ellicott,  and  around  him  the  flower  of  our 
English  scholarship.  There  were  Alford  and  Stanley 
and  Lightfoot,  intently  studying  the  sheets  before  them 
on  the  table.  Westcott  was  there,  and  Hort  and 


THE  REVISED    VERSION.  127 

Scrivener — names  long  famous  in  the  history  of  textual 
criticism — Dr.  Eadie  of  Scotland,  and  the  Master  of 
the  Temple,  and  the  venerable  Archbishop  Trench  of 
Dublin,  with  many  other  scholars  no  less  distinguished 
than  they.  Different  religious  communities  were 
represented— different  schools  of  thought— different 
opinions  on  matters  closely  connected  with  the  work 
in  hand.  This  is  one  of  the  great  securities  for  the 
fairness  of  the  New  Revision.  Whatever  other  charges 
may  be  brought  against  it,  that  of  bias,  even  uncon- 
scious bias,  toward  any  set  of  theological  views  is 
quite  out  of  the  question  where  Baptist  and  Methodist 
and  Presbyterian  and  Churchman  sat  side  by  side  in 
the  selected  company  of  Revisers.  And,  as  if  to  make 
this  assurance  doubly  sure,  across  the  Atlantic  a  simi- 
larly constituted  company  was  preparing  to  cooperate 
with  these  to  criticize  the  work  and  suggest  emenda- 
tions, so  that  on  the  whole  nearly  a  hundred  of  the 
ripest  scholars  of  England  and  America  were  con- 
nected with  the  New  Revision. 

§  3.  And  now  let  us  watch  the  Revisers  at  their 
work.  Before  each  man  lies  a  sheet  with  a  column  of 
the  Authorized  Version  printed  in  the  middle,  leaving 
a  wide  margin  on  either  side  for  suggested  alterations, 
the  left  hand  for  changes  in  the  Greek  text,  and  the 
right  for  those  referring  to  the  English  rendering. 
These  sheets  are  already  covered  with  notes,  the  result 


128  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

of  each  Reviser's  private  study  of  the  passage  before- 
hand. After  prayers  and  reading  of  the  minutes,  the 
chairman  reads  over  for  the  company  part  of  the  pas- 
sage on  the  printed  sheet  (Matt.  i.  18-25),  and  asks  for 
any  suggested  emendations. 

At  the  first  verse  a  member,  referring  to  the  notes 
on  his  sheet,  remarks  that  certain  old  manuscripts  read 
"the  birth  of  the  Christ"  instead  of  "the  birth  of 
Jesus  Christ."  Dr.  Scrivener  and  Dr.  Hort  state  the 
evidence  on  the  subject,  and  after  a  full  discussion  it 
is  decided  by  the  votes  of  the  meeting  that  the  re- 
ceived reading  has  most  authority  in  its  favor;  but,  in 
order  to  represent  fairly  the  state  of  the  case,  it  is 
allowed  that  the  margin  should  contain  the  words, 
"Some  ancient  authorities  read  'of  the  Christ.'" 
Some  of  the  members  are  of  opinion  that  the  name 
"Holy  Ghost"  in  same  verse  would  be  better  if 
modernized  into  "Holy  Spirit,"  but  as  this  is  a  mere 
question  of  rendering,  it  is  laid  aside  until  the  textual 
corrections  have  been  discussed.  The  next  of  im- 
portance is  the  word  "firstborn"  in  ver.  25,  which  is 
omitted  in  many  old  authorities.  Again  the  evidence 
on  both  sides  is  fully  stated,  and  the  members  present, 
each  of  whom  has  already  privately  studied  it  before, 
vote  on  the  question,  the  result  being  that  the  words 
"  her  firstborn  "  are  omitted. 

And  now,  the  textual  question  being  settled,  the 
chairman  asks  for  suggestions  as  to  the  rendering,  and 


THE  REVISED    VERSION.  129 

it  is  proposed  that  in  the  first  verse  the  word  "be- 
trothed" should  be  substituted  for  "espoused,"  the 
latter  being  rather  an  antiquated  form.  This  also  is 
decided  by  vote  in  the  affirmative,  and  thus  they  pro- 
ceed verse  by  verse  till  the  close  of  the  meeting,  when 
the  whole  passage,  as  amended,  is  read  over  by  the 
chairman. 

Four  years  afterward  we  glance  at  their  work  again. 
They  have  reached  now  the  First  Epistle  General  of  St. 
John,  and  the  sheets  lying  before  them  contain  part  of 
the  ^th  chapter.  No  question  of  importance  arises  till 
the  yth  verse  is  reached  — 

7.  "  For  there  are  three  that  bear  record  [in  heaven — the  Father, 
the  Word,  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  these  three  are  one. 

8.  And  there  are  three  that  bear  witness  in  earth],  the  Spirit,  and 
the  Water,  and  the  Blood,  and  these  three  agree  in  one  " — 

when  it  is  proposed  that  that  part  of  the  passage  which 
we  have  here  placed  in  brackets  be  omitted  as  not  be- 
longing to  the  original  text. 

Time  was  when  such  a  suggestion  would  have 
roused  a  formidable  controversy  ; l  but  textual  criticism 
has  greatly  progressed  since  then,  and  the  question  is 
not  considered  by  the  Revisers  even  to  need  discussing. 
The  evidence  is  as  follows: — The  passage  occurs  in 
two  modern  Greek  manuscripts — one  of  them  in  the 
library  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin — in  one  or  two 

»  Upwards  of  fifty  books,  pamphlets,  &c.,  written  on  the  subject  arc 
mentioned  in  Home's  Introduction. 


130  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

Ancient  Versions  of  comparatively  little  value,  and 
many  modern  copies  of  the  Vulgate;  besides  which  it 
is  quoted  by  a  few  African  Fathers,  whose  testimony, 
on  the  whole,  is  not  of  much  weight  in  its  favor. 

Against  this  are  to  be  set  the  following  facts: —  (i.) 
Not  a  single  Greek  manuscript  or  church  lesson-book 
before  the  fifteenth  century  has  any  trace  of  the  passage. 
This  in  itself  would  be  sufficient  evidence  against  it. 
(2.)  It  is  omitted  in  almost  every  Ancient  Version  of 
any  critical  value,  including  the  best  copies  of  the 
Vulgate  (St.  Jerome's  Revised  Bible);  and  (3.)  no 
Greek  Father  quotes  it  even  in  the  arguments  about 
the  Trinity,  where  it  would  have  been  of  immense 
importance  if  it  had  been  in  their  copies.  There  is 
other  evidence  against  it  also;  but  it  must  be  quite 
clear,  even  from  this,  that  the  passage  only  lately  got 
interpolated  into  our  Greek  Testament,  and  never  had 
any  right  to  its  place  in  the  English  Bible.1  The  Re- 
visers therefore  omit  it  from  the  text. 


i  Erasmus  (see  page  83),  not  finding  the  words  in  any  Greek  manu- 
script, omitted  them  from  the  first  two  editions  of  his  Greek  Testa- 
ment, which  was  chiefly  the  authority  that  our  translators  used.  But 
as  they  had  long  stood  in  the  Latin  Vulgate,  an  outcry  was  at  once 
raised  that  he  was  tampering  with  the  Bible.  He  insisted  that  no 
Greek  manuscript  contained  the  passage  ;  "  and,"  said  he  at  last,  when 
they  pressed  him,  "  if  you  can  show  me  even  a  single  one  in  which 
they  occur,  I  will  insert  them  in  the  future."  Unfortunately  they  did 
find  one,  the  manuscript  of  Montfort,  which  is  now  in  the  library  of 
Trinity  College,  Dublin,  but  is  evidently  no  older  than  about  the  fifteenth 
century.  The  words  had  got  into  it  probably  from  some  corrupt  Latin 
manuscript ;  and  on  this  slight  authority  Erasmus  admitted  them  into 
his  text 


THE  REVISED   VERSION.  131 

But  the  reader  must  not  think  that  this  description 
represents  the  amount  of  care  bestowed  on  the  work. 
After  this  first  revision  had  been  completed,  of  a 
certain  portion,  it  was  transmitted  to  America  and 
reviewed  by  the  American  committee,  and  returned 
again  to  England.  Then  it  underwent  a  second 
revision,  taking  into  account  the  American  sugges- 
tions, and  was  again  sent  back  to  America  to  be 
reviewed.  After  these  four  revisions  it  underwent  a 
fifth  in  England,  chiefly  with  a  view  of  removing  any 
roughness  of  rendering.  And  there  was  yet  a  sixth, 
and  in  some  cases  even  a  seventh  revision,  for  the 
settling  of  points  that  we  need  not  enter  on  more 
fully  here.  So  that  we  may  have  every  confidence  that 
the  changes  made,  whatever  their  merits,  at  least  were 
made  only  after  the  most  thorough  consideration. 

And  so  the  work  went  on,  month  after  month,  and 
more  than  ten  years  had  passed,  and  some  of  the  most 
eminent  of  those  who  sat  that  summer  day  in  the 
Jerusalem  Chamber  were  numbered  among  the  dead, 
when,  on  the  evening  of  November  1 1,  1880,  the  New 
Testament  Company  assembled  in  the  church  of  St. 
Martin-in-Fields  for  a  special  service  of  prayer  and 
thanksgiving — "of  thanksgiving  for  the  happy  com- 
pletion of  their  labors — of  prayer  that  all  that  had  been 
wrong  in  their  spirit  or  action  might  mercifully  be  for- 
given, and  that  He  whose  glory  they  had  humbly 
striven  to  promote  might  graciously  accept  this  their 


132  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

service,  and  use  it  for  the  good  of  man  and  the  honor 
of  His  holy  Name." 

Four  years  afterward  the  Old  Testament  Com- 
pany finished  their  work,  and  on  May  ^th,  1885,  the 
complete  Revised  Bible  was  in  the  hands  of  the  public. 

§  4.  And  now  a  few  words  about  this  Revised 
Bible.  It  is  quite  outside  the  plan  of  this  little  book  to 
offer  any  criticisms  on  its  merits  or  demerits,  or  any 
judgment  as  to  its  ultimate  reception.  Indeed,  it  is 
rather  soon  yet  to  pronounce  very  confidently  on  either 
question.  For  many  years  after  its  first  appearance 
our  present  grand  Old  Version  had  to  encounter  fierce 
opposition  and  severe  criticism — Broughton,  the  great- 
est Hebrew  scholar  of  the  day,  wrote  to  King  James 
that  he  "would  rather  be  torn  asunder  by  wild  horses 
than  allow  such  a  version  to  be  imposed  on  the 
Church,"1 — and  yet  in  the  end  it  won  its  way  and 
attained  a  position  that  no  version  before  or  since  in 
any  country  has  attained. 

Whether  the  New  Version  will  equally  succeed,  or 
whether,  as  is  the  general  opinion,  it  will  need  a  re- 
vision before  being  fully  received,  remains  yet  to  be 
seen.  But  in  any  case  let  us  give  it  a  fair  unprejudiced 
reception.  Dr.  Bickersteth  tells  of  a  smart  young 

i  In  fifteen  verses  of  Luke  iii.,  he  says,  the  translators  have  fifteen 
score  of  idle  words  to  account  for  in  the  Day  of  Judgment.  "With 
Archbishop  Bancroft,  who  took  the  lead  in  the  work,  he  is  especially 
indignant.  He  believes  that  by  and  by  King  James,  looking  down 
from  Abraham's  bosom,  shall  behold  Bancroft  in  the  place  of  torment 


THE  REVISED    VERSION.  133 

American  deacon  who  thought  to  crush  it  on  its  first 
appearance  by  informing  his  people  that  "if  the  Au- 
thorized Version  was  good  enough  for  St.  Paul  it  was 
good  enough  for  him,"  and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  with 
many  people  who  are  less  ignorant  there  is  sometimes 
a  similar  spirit  exhibited. 

Now  let  us  remember  that,  whatever  the  merits  or 
demerits  of  the  book,  it  is  at  least  entitled  to  respect 
as  an  earnest  attempt  to  get  nearer  to  the  truth,  and 
to  present  to  English-speaking  people  the  results  of 
two  centuries  of  study  by  the  most  eminent  Biblical 
scholars. 

And  remember,  too,  that  no  previous  revision  has 
ever  had  such  advantages  as  this.  Not  to  speak  of  the 
valuable  manuscripts  available,  "upon  no  previous  re- 
vision have  so  many  scholars  been  engaged.  In  no 
previous  revision  has  the  cooperation  of  those  engaged 
on  it  been  so  equally  diffused  over  all  parts  of  the 
work.  In  no  previous  revision  have  those  who  took 
the  lead  in  it  shown  so  large  a  measure  of  Christian 
confidence  in  those  who  were  outside  their  own  com- 
munion. In  no  previous  revision  have  such  effective- 
precautions  been  created  by  the  very  composition  of 
the  body  of  Revisers  against  accidental  oversight  or 
against  any  lurking  bias  that  might  arise  from  natural 
tendencies  or  ecclesiastical  prepossessions.  On  these 
accounts  alone,  if  on  no  other,  this  Revision  may  be 
fairly  said  to  possess  peculiar  claims  upon  the  con- 


134  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

fidence  of  all  thoughtful  and  devout  readers  of  the 
Bible." 


§  5.  It  was  objected  by  some,  when  this  Revision 
was  first  proposed,  that  it  would  be  dangerous  to  un- 
settle men's  faith  by  showing  them  that  the  old  Bible 
they  so  reverenced  contained  many  passages  wrongly 
translated,  and  some  even  which  had  no  right  to  a 
place  in  it  at  all.  It  is  pleasant  to  see  that  such  un- 
worthy sentiments  are  rapidly  disappearing.  It  would 
be  a  sad  case  indeed  if  men's  faith  were  to  depend  on 
their  teachers  keeping  from  them  facts  which  they 
themselves  have  long  since  known — acting,  to  use 
Dean  Stanley's  scathing  comparison,  like  the  Greek 
bishops  at  Jerusalem,  who  pretend  at  Easter  to  receive 
the  sacred  fire  from  heaven,  and  though  they  do  not 
profess  to  believe  personally  in  the  supposed  miracle, 
yet  retain  the  ceremonial,  lest  the  ignorant  multitudes 
who  believe  in  it  should  have  their  minds  disquieted. 

Far  better  to  do  what  has  been  done — fearlessly 
make  any  changes  that  were  necessary  to  remove  the 
few  superficial  flaws  in  our  Bible,  and  try  to  teach  men 
the  grounds  on  which  such  changes  were  made.  Our 
faith  is  given  to  the  words  of  the  inspired  writers.  It 
is  no  disparagement  to  them  if  we  discover  that  fallible 
men  in  collecting  and  translating  these  words  have 
sometimes  made  mistakes,  and  it  is  certainly  no  honor 
to  the  words  which  we  profess  to  reverence  if  we 


THE  REVISED   VERSION.  135 

knowingly  allow  these  mistakes  to  remain  uncor- 
rected. 

When  King  James's  translation  was  offered  there 
was  no  such  fear  of  unsettling  men's  faith,  for  the 
men  of  that  day  had  already  four  or  five  different 
Bibles  competing  for  their  favor,  and  so  they  easily 
distinguished  between  an  Inspired  Original  and  the 
English  versions  of  that  original,  one  of  which  might 
easily  be  better  than  another. 

Rightly  understood,  this  Revision  should  be  rather 
a  ground  for  increased  confidence,  showing  us  how 
nearly  perfect  we  may  consider  our  English  Bible 
already,  when  we  find  that  this  thorough  criticism  and 
the  investigation  of  material  collecting  for  the  past 
two  hundred  years  has  left  unchanged  every  doctrine 
which  we  found  in  our  Old  Version,  while  it  certainly 
is  helping  us  to  understand  some  of  them  more  clearly 
than  we  ever  did  before. 

§.  6.  A  few  remarks  on  the  New  Revision  itself  will 
close  this  chapter.  The  Revisers  refer  to  their  work 
under  the  heads  of  TEXT,  TRANSLATION,  LANGUAGE,  and 
MARGINAL  NOTES. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  their  corrections  of 
the  TEXT  (i.e.,  the  original  Hebrew  and  Greek),  the 
reader  is  already  in  a  position  in  some  measure  to 
judge  of  the  sources  of  information  accessible  to  them 
and  of  their  fitness  to  make  such  corrections. 


136  HOW  WE  GOT  OUR  BIBLE. 

As  to  TRANSLATION  and  LANGUAGE,  perhaps  there  is 
foundation  for  the  charge  against  the  New  Testament 
Company  at  least,  of  having  disregarded  the  first  rule 
laid  down  for  them  by  Convocation,  "to  introduce  as 
few  alterations  as  possible  into  the  text  of  the  Author- 
ized Version."  But  before  condemning  them  it  is 
only  fair  to  read  their  explanations  in  the  Preface.  It 
is  also  charged  against  them  that  their  English  is  not 
as  smooth  and  graceful  as  that  of  the  Old  Version  to 
which  we  were  accustomed.  Perhaps  not.  But  this 
at  least  will  be  universally  allowed,  that  if  we  have 
lost  in  smoothness  and  beauty  of  diction,  we  have 
greatly  gained  in  point  of  accuracy.  A  scrupulous  at- 
tention to  the  force  of  the  Greek  article,  the  different 
tenses  of  verbs,  and  the  delicate  shades  of  meaning  in 
particles  and  prepositions,  will  account  for  many  of 
the  minor  changes,  which,  though  they  may  seem  at 
first  sight  trifling  and  unnecessary,  will  often  be  found 
to  affect  seriously  the  meaning  of  a  passage.  The  Re- 
visers also  claim  to  have  avoided  the  practice,  adopted 
in  the  Authorized  Version,  of  translating  for  the  sake 
of  euphony  the  same  Greek  word  by  different  English 
words.  For  example,  we  have  comforter  and  advo- 
cate— eternal  and  everlasting — count,  and  impute,  and 
reckon ' — as  respectively  renderings  of  the  same  Greek 


1  In  Rom.  iv.,  Authorized  Version,  these  three  verbs  are  used  to 
represent  one  Greek  verb.  Let  the  reader  turn  to  the  Revised  Ver- 
»ion,  where  the  word  ••  reckon  "  is  used  throughout  the  chapter,  and 


THE  REVISED    VERSION.  137 

word,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  to  take  only  one  ex- 
ample, the  word  " ordain"  represents  ten  different 
words  in  the  original  Greek.  The  result  of  such  a 
practice  is,  that  the  English  reader,  using  a  Concord- 
ance or  the  marginal  references  of  his  Bible  to  compare 
passages  where  the  same  word  occurs,  is  sometimes 
misled  and  frequently  loses  much  useful  information. 

In  such  cases  the  Revisers  have  sacrificed  elegance 
to  accuracy  of  translation,  though,  of  course,  that  is 
not  a  sufficient  plea,  unless  it  can  be  shown  that  ele- 
gance and  accuracy  cannot  here  go  together. 

The  MARGINAL  NOTES  contain  much  valuable  infor- 
mation, and  often  throw  fresh  light  on  the  translation 
in  the  text.  But  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  in  a  book  in- 
tended for  indiscriminate  circulation  the  Revisers  have 
used  one  class  of  these  notes  rather  unguardedly. 
When  such  expressions  are  found  as  "Some  manu- 
scripts read  the  passage  thus,"  "  Some  ancient  author- 
ities omit  these  words,"  &c.,  the  reader  who  under- 
stands the  state  of  the  case  sees  nothing  disturbing  in 
the  fact  that  out  of  a  large  number  of  authorities  ex- 
amined some  few  should  vary  from  the  reading  found 
in  all  the  others.  Such  readers  the  Revisers  seem  to 
have  had  in  view.  They  did  not  enough  think  them- 
selves into  the  position  of  the  plain  simple  men  and 


he  will  see  how  much  St.  Paul's  argument  has  gained  in  clearness 
though  perhaps  the  passage  in  reading  does  not  sound  quite  as  well  as 
before. 


138  HOW  WE  GOT  OVR  BIBLE. 

women  who  have  never  heard  of  such  matters,  and 
on  whom  one  cannot  help  fearing,  from  the  frequent 
repetition  of  such  notes,  a  disturbing  effect  which  is 
in  reality  quite  unwarranted. 

A  very  valuable  improvement  is  the  arrangement  of 
the  text  into  paragraphs  adapted  to  the  subject.  The 
continuity  of  thought  is  not,  as  in  our  Authorized  Ver- 
sion, interrupted  by  frequent  and  often  very  injudi- 
cious breaks  into  verses,  while  yet  the  facilities  for 
reference  are  retained  by  the  numbering  of  the  old 
division  in  the  margin.  The  printing  of  the  Poetical 
Books  in  proper  metrical  form  may  be  considered, 
too,  a  decided  advantage.  They  were  directed  also  to 
revise  the  headings  of  chapters,  and  it  would  certainly 
be  an  advantage  if  this  were  well  done,  adapting  it  to 
the  paragraph  system.  But  there  is  much  force  in 
their  reason  for  leaving  it  undone.  It  involved  in 
many  cases  expressions  of  theological  opinion  which 
could  not  fairly  find  a  place  in  the  Bible.  Indeed,  Jew- 
ish readers  have  had  to  complain  of  the  Old  Testament 
chapter  headings  in  the  Authorized  Version,  that  when 
the  prophets  speak  of  sin  it  is  always  the  sin  of  the 
Jews,  but  when  of  glory  and  of  holiness,  it  is  the 
glory  and  holiness  of  the  Church. 

On  the  whole,  whatever  the  imperfections  of  the 
Revised  Bible,  and  whatever  its  fate  may  be  in  the 
future,  we  may  at  the  very  least  claim  a  present  posi- 
tion for  it  as  a  most  valuable  commentary  to  the  read- 


THE  REVISED    VERSION.  139 

crs  of  the  Authorized  Version,  placing  them  as  nearly 
as  an  English  version  can  do  on  the  level  with  the 
reader  of  the  original  tongues. 

And  now  we  have  followed  the  story  of  the  Bible 
from  the  old  record  chest  of  Ephesus  1800  years  ago 
to  the  new  book  which  is  in  our  hands  to-day,  and  it 
is  hoped  that  the  question  has  been  in  some  measure 
answered,  How  we  got  our  Bible. 

Let  the  story  help  us  to  value  our  Bible  more.  It 
is  not  without  purpose  that  God  has  so  wonderfully 
preserved  His  message;  it  is  not  without  purpose  that 
He  raised  up  His  workers  to  search  out  the  precious 
manuscripts  from  the  dusty  libraries  of  convent  and 
cathedral,  to  collect  and  compare  them  together  with 
such  toil  and  care,  and  then  to  render  into  clear  grace- 
ful English  for  us  the  very  message  which  He  sent  to 
earth  thousands  of  years  since  to  comfort  and  brighten 
human  life.  "Other  men  indeed  have  labored,  and 
we  have  entered  into  their  labors." 

May  it  please  Him  who  has  so  preserved  for  us  His 
Word  to  grant  us  all  "increase  of  grace  to  hear  meekly 
that  Word,  and  to  receive  it  with  pure  affection,  and 
to  bring  forth  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit"! 


THE  END. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


MAY  15  1961 

tIBRAKY    U3K. 

JON  n  i%i 

-.  ^-i    :        .       ' 

m..:jm 

j 

E£B_l£jg£ 

flfn   ,._.                                 .       4                    ^  ~  _  A 

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